■ ■ 

■^^Bff^HESixmlllmfBunDlfiJBaH 







H 
Ti 



,A-::»v 









■ 



(KCff 



MD 



■:^ 



■ram 
wl HB EH m 

■ :r>s" Ktf — 

„,*«.«.»*,*,.,.,«„,,♦•, Hon 






HI gam 




H 



Hi 



























-5- 



























THE 



TWELVE PRINCIPLES 
OF EFFICIENCY 



BY 



HARRINGTON EMERSON 




NEW YORK 

THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE 
1912 



X* 



Copyright, 1911 
By JOHN R. DUNLAP 



OU305096 



V 



INTRODUCTION 

Harrington Emerson's earlier book "Effi- 
ciency as a Basis for Operation and Wages" 
appeared originally in 1908, and a third edi- 
tion, revised and enlarged, is being reissued 
almost in parallel with this second and later 
work on "The Twelve Principles of Efficiency." 
The relations between the first and second pre- 
sentations of the subject thus become clear. 
The former sets forth a new view of the whole 
industrial problem and of the relations and 
proportions of the factors entering into it. It 
is the declaration of a philosophy. This latter 
work, stronger even than its predecessor, and 
more specific in statement, reduces the doc- 
trine of efficiency to a code upon which to base 
rules of practice. 

In the volume now published, the author de- 
fines twelve principles by which efficiency is 
determined. Five of these concern relations 
between men — or, in the industrial problem, 
specifically between employer and employee. 
Seven of them concern methods or institutions 
and systems established in the manufacturing 
plant or in the operating and distributing com- 
pany. These twelve principles are so definite, 



11 INTRODUCTION 

so constant, so true, that they may be used as 
gauges. Any industry, any establishment, any 
operation, may be tested thereby, and its in- 
efficiency located and measured by the amount 
of its failure to conform to one or more of the 
twelve principles. 

Yet the twelve principles are not isolated 
and independent influences, but are interde- 
pendent and co-ordinated — related to one an- 
other (in the author's effective simile) as the 
stones of a dome. One or even several may 
be lacking; yet the structure, though weak- 
ened and imperfect, will stand. From a wholly 
material, non-moral, and near-visioned point 
of view, indeed, the seven "practical" princi- 
ples alone would be sufficient for the achieve- 
ment of success. Even an evil purpose can be 
most effectively accomplished by their observ- 
ance. When, however, these are interlocked 
with the five "altruistic" principles, purposes, 
as well as measures, are turned from lower 
temporary desires to the larger eternal desira- 
bilities. The doctrines of efficiency therefore 
define something infinitely greater than a sys- 
tem of management. They set forth a moral- 
ity, and provide practicable measures for its 
attainment. 

The method of treatment is simple and log- 
ical. An introductory chapter lays down the 
premise that the prime institutions for the 
attainment of efficiency are not men, materials, 
money, machines, methods, but theories of or- 



INTRODUCTION 111 

ganization and principles, and that inefficiency 
prevails because the type of organization in 
general use does not lend itself to the applica- 
tion of efficiency principles. The second chap- 
ter discusses the type of organization under 
which efficiency principles can be successfully 
applied. The twelve following chapters take 
up each one a single principle: — 1. Ideals; 2. 
Common-Sense and Judgment; 3. Competent 
Counsel; 4. Discipline; 5. The Fair Deal; 6. 
Reliable, Immediate and Accurate Records; 7. 
Planning and Despatching; 8. Standards and 
Schedules; 9. Standardized Conditions; 10. 
Standardized Operations; 11. Written Stand- 
ard-Practice Instructions; 12. Efficiency Re- 
ward. Two concluding chapters show how the 
principles are applied as a means of diagnosis 
of industrial conditions and correction of exist- 
ing inefficiencies. 

Charles Buxton Going. 



Lord, Thou hast made this world below the shadow of 

a dream . . . 
I'll stand the middle watch up here — alone wi' God an' 

these 
My engines . . . 

. . . through all the seas of all Thy world . . . 
. . . What I ha' seen since ocean steam began 

Leaves me no doot for the machine: But what about 

the man? 
The man that counts, wi' all his runs . . . 

"Mister McAndrews, don't you think steam spoils 

romance at sea?" 
Damned ijjit! . . . Romance! 

Lord, send a man like Robbie Burns to sing the Song 
o' Steam! 

. . . True beat, full power, the clangin' chorus goes 

Clear to the tunnel where they sit, my purrin' dynamos. 

Interdependence absolute, foreseen, ordained, decreed, 

To work, ye'll note, at any tilt an' every rate of 
speed . . . 

An' singin' like the Mornin' Stars for joy that they 
are made. . . . 

Now, a'together, hear them lift their lesson, theirs an' 
mine: 

"Law, Order, Duty an' Restraint, Obedience, Disci- 
pline!" . . . 

Oh for a man to weld it then, in one trip-hammer 
strain . . . 

An' by that light — now, mark my word — we'll build the 
Perfect Ship. 

Rudyard Kipling; Mc Andrew 9 8 Hymn. 



PREFACE 

Why has the time come to discard the old 
and use the new? 

What past truths have become fallacies? 

What new truths are becoming basic? 

Why has this book been written? 

These are some of the queries to which the 
reader may justly expect answers, especially if 
they reveal the point of view from which the 
principles of efficiency have been collated, 
elaborated, and applied. 

"What about the man?" What about hu- 
manity, present and future? This is the test 
to be applied to every ideal, to every organiza- 
tion, to all equipment ; the ideal of humanity is 
to be kept burning by every executive, because 
the ideal of humanity, not the ideal of selfish 
gain, underlies every principle of efficiency. 

My eldest daughter accuses me of starting 
every discussion with the period before Adam. 
This is perhaps due to a lingering, but almost 
obliterated, trace of German Griindlichkeit 
pounded into me in German schooldays. (From 
the remote beginning there have been forward 
steps which we now clearly see, but which 
were not perceived at the time.) French 



VI PREFACE 

teaching, of which I also had full share, if not 
so thorough as German, is far more logical and 
clear. The French always seek causes and 
accept what flows from them. 

Beginning, therefore, before Adam, we can 
go back to a time when there was no life on 
this planet, when molar, molecular, and corpus- 
cular forces were active, and in strict obedi- 
ence to unsentient law, there was the logical 
morality of the conditions. The moralities of 
physical movements, of chemical affinities, of 
corpuscular activities, are teaching us more 
and more; they are still our foundations. 

After a long while life came to our earth, 
and its one morality seems to have been 
"Every creature for itself and its descendants." 
Between species and species there was no jus- 
tice, no mercy; between individual and indi- 
vidual, no justice, no mercy; only a dawning 
of morality in conjugal and parental love. In 
those days, deceit, rapacity, cruelty, dishonesty, 
unchastity were the great virtues since only 
those survived who practiced them most assidu- 
ously. 

Then man appeared, and practising all the 
old virtues, he slowly evolved a higher moral- 
ity. "Thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, 
thou shalt not commit adultery, thou shalt not 
bear false witness, thou shalt love they neigh- 
bor as thyself." The tenets of all the great 
religions exhale the individual duty to the 
individual neighbor. From the period of this 



PREFACE Vll 

higher but narrow morality we are just 
emerging. 

In the last 150 years another event has oc- 
curred, next in importance to the advent of 
life, to the advent of humanity. This event is 
the substitution of coal, oil, gas, and distant 
waterfalls for human, for animal muscular 
energy, for nearby use of wind and water cur- 
rent. Formerly men carried out their plans by 
forcing other men, by compelling asses, oxen 
and horses to work for them. 

Now men carry out their plans by making 
uncarnate forces work. Two men or two 
horses working together work more efficiently 
than four; one man or one horse singly works 
more than half as much as two working to- 
gether. The most efficient incarnate unit is 
therefore one man, one horse. How does man 
power or horse power compare with uncarnate 
power? 

Comparisons 

Man. Horse. Power Engine. 
Weight per horse power, 

pounds 1,000 1,000 2 to 100 

Fuel per horse-power hour, 

pounds 6 3.6 0.5 to 3 

Cost of food per ton $40 $20 $1 to $40 

Maximum horse power, per 

unit Vs 1- 70,000 or more 

Available working time, 

per cent 40 40 40—90 

Tilling the soil even with so perfected a tool 
as a good spade, it would take 560 seasons to 
turn over a square mile of land, 640 acres. A 



Vlll PREFACE 

man with a team and good plow can do it in 
four seasons. I tried it and became dis- 
couraged, Twelve men with three mechanical 
tractors and fifty-one plows in a gang can turn 
over 640 acres in 36 hours. I have a photo- 
graph of the outfit at work. 

Per Cent of Energy From Fuel 

Small steam plant 5 

Man working steadily in a manual trade 7 

Large steam or oil plant 10 

Small gas engine 20 

Man working for a short time at maximum of en- 
durance 21 

Large gas engine 30 

At $2.00 a day, man power costs per horse 
power, $54,000 per year of 7,500 hours. In a 
small gasoline engine it costs $300 a year per 
horse power; for large power installations, 
whether steam, gas or electrical, it costs from 
$20 a year up to $200 per horse power. Man 
power costs therefore from 135 to 1,350 times 
as much as uncarnate power. 

Thirty men, as men work, will yield 1 horse 
power of energy each hour, but so will 1 to 5 
pounds of coal. A ton of coal may be assumed 
to have the energy of five men for a whole year. 

One hundred and sixty years ago the use of 
coal had not yet begun on a commercial scale; 
all the work was done by man and beast. Sixty 
years ago in the United States the consumption 
of coal, used most wastefully, was one-quarter 
ton per adult male, each ton able to do the work 
of five men. Today the consumption of coal is 



*A 



PREFACE IX 

equal to the energy of 22 men and the energy 
from oil, from gas, from distant waterfalls, is 
not included. 

On the average each adult man is supple- 
mented by 22 mechanical slaves whose keep 
averages less than one four-hundredth of his 
own value of $2.00 a day. 

As a producer of muscular energy man is 
hopelessly outclassed, as an intelligent super- 
visor and director he is just beginning to come 
into his inheritance. In these directions he 
has no competition nor limit to his value. 

It is true that in the ages from which we are 
just emerging, the wealth of the few was based 
on the poverty of the many. The free inhabi- 
tants of Athens reached the highest state of 
real civilization the planet has ever seen be- 
cause for every free man there were at least 
five slaves. Pharaoh, advised by Joseph, grew 
rich by using the seven years of famine to rob 
his people of their money, their savings, their 
cattle, their lands and their liberty. As slaves 
they could be and were requisitioned to do mus- 
cular work, as beating the ponds at night to 
scare the frogs that their masters might sleep, 
or to swing fans all night, as in India today, 
that the rich may slumber. Those few who 
were rich were supported by the labor of the 
many. Today this is not so. 

If some gifted thinker should discover a 
method of making the sun convert lead into 
radium, a million times more powerful than 



X PREFACE 

coal, he would have robbed no one, he would 
have impoverished none, he would immensely 
benefit humanity, even though the discovery 
netted him $1,000,000,000. 

Muscular energy no longer counts for much. 
The world's energy comes from engines, and 
any man who develops a tool or machine to do 
work formerly done by men is adding to the 
number of tireless slaves who serve first the 
inventor and then all humanity. It is not true 
that a machine permanently displaces a man; 
it promotes him, but it is the duty of corpora- 
tions and of the State to make the period of 
transition easy, not one of temporary hardship. 

It is not labor, not capital, not land, that has 
created modern wealth or is creating it today. 
It is ideas that create wealth, and what is 
wanted is more ideas — more uncovering of 
natural reservoirs, and less labor and capital 
and land per unit of production. Gold has 
very little intrinsic value, diamonds have none 
except to cut glass and stone. It is a thought, 
a sentiment, that gives value to gold and dia- 
monds ; it was the invention of the incandescent 
lamp that doubled the value of platinum. 
Columbus with his idea of land to the west, 
Franklin, Washington, Jefferson, with their 
ideas of liberty, Jefferson with his idea of ter- 
ritorial expansion, Fulton with his idea of the 
steamboat, Stephenson with his creation of the 
locomotive and track; it was Howe, Morse, 
Edison, Westinghouse, Bell and Gray, Marconi ; 



PREFACE XI 

it was Lincoln, it was Rockefeller, Carnegie, 
J. J. Hill and Harriman with their ideas, it was 
Roosevelt with the Panama Canal, that have 
made the United States what it is. All these 
men used labor and capital to uncover and 
develop the hitherto unutilized resources of the 
universe. 

The Dutch and the Huguenots settled in 
South Africa about the same time North 
America above the gulf was colonized. The 
United States grew on account of ideas ; South 
Africa remained undeveloped because of 
paucity of ideas, paucity of energy. The blacks 
had to do the work. There was no use for 
steam engines. 

Muscular effort can be stimulated by the lash 
— intelligent supervision, intellectual produc- 
tion, never ! One single idea may have greater 
value than all the labor of all the men, animals, 
and engines for a century. The age of mus- 
cular human effort and of the lash is passing 
away, and the old morality with it; the age of 
supervision, of co-operative stimulus, is in full 
advance; and with it comes a new morality, 
under which the Golden Rule can be extended 
from the relations between individuals to 
those between classes, nationalities, and races. 
The highest official cannot dictate to the young- 
est apprenticed worker. Both are creatures of 
the machine, but both in turn must serve it, 
for unless its every law and need is lived up 
to, it will refuse to work efficiently, often re- 



Xll PREFACE 

fuse to work at all. With these new duties and 
privileges of men toward each other old truths 
become fallacies and paradoxes become the 
basic truths of tomorrow. 

To forward the new morality, to extend the 
dominion of man over uncarnate energy and 
its use, to substitute highly paid thinkers and 
supervisors for devitalized toilers, to help each 
individual, each corporation, each government 
to meet its part of the obligation, above all to 
inspire those executives on whose skill all prog- 
ress and all wise performance depends, is the 
justification of these essays. 

Harrington Emerson 

November, 1911 



CONTENTS 

Chapter I. Organization and Principles the 
Prime Instruments for Efficiency 

The Efficiency Problem Exemplified by an 
Actual Example — How 60 per cent Increase 
of Output with 10 per cent Increase of Pay- 
roll Was Attained in Six Months — 50 per cent 
Reduction in Payroll Cost in Twelve Months 
— This Reduction Secured by a New Type of 
Organization and Application of Certain Prin- 
ciples — Principles More Potent than Ma- 
terial, Money, Machines or Methods- — Power 
of These Principles Shown by Recent History 
— The Franco-Prussian War as an Example — 
How Bismarck and von Moltke Applied the 
Twelve Principles of Efficiency — Japan's Ap- 
plication of Them the Cause of Her Military 
and Industrial Prowess — Application of Effi- 
ciency Principles the Basis of Ascendency 

Chapter II. The Type of Organization Through 
Which Efficiency Is Attained 

Inefficiency Is Caused by Industrial Disease 
— The Germ of this Disease Is Defective Or- 
ganization—Two Fundamental Types of Or- 
ganization Described and Exemplified — Line 
Organization Effective for Offense and De- 
struction — Staff Organization Effective for 
Defense and Construction — Inefficiency of 
Line Organization Shown in the Spanish- 
American War — Strenuousness the Opposite 
of Efficiency — Piece-Rates Based on the 
Theory of Strenuousness — Standard Times 
and Bonus on the Theory of Efficiency— Ex- 
amples of Industrial Mistakes Due to De- 
fective Organization — Ordinary Organization 

Passes All Power and Responsibility to the 

• • • 
Xlll 



XIV CONTENTS 

Workman — Functional Organization Brings 
All Knowledge and Skill to the Assistance of 
the Workman — Many Modes of Introducing 
Efficiency-Control into Line Direction — Gen- 
eral Form of an Efficient Organization 27 

Chapter III. The First Principle: Clearly 
Defined Ideals 

Efficiency Principles, though Interrelated, 
Stand in Logical Sequence — The First Es- 
sential Is Correct Ideals and Purposes — 
Examples of Perverse and Deleterious Ideals 
— Their Costly Results — Even Greater Losses 
from Vague Ideals or No Ideals — The Ameri- 
can Temperament Stronger in Impulses than 
in Fixed Ideals — National Characteristics as 
Revealed by Ideals Carried into Execution — 
The Seven Ancient Wonders of the World — 
The Seven Modern Wonders — Efficiency Ideals 
Weak in Modern Engineering Works — The 
Fallacy of Over-Reliance on Equipment — Re- 
lations of the Efficiency Engineer to the For- 
mulation of Ideals — The Alternatives Offered 
the Modern Manager 59 

Chapter IV. The Second Principle: Common 
Sense 

Supernal Common-Sense versus Near Com- 
mon-Sense — The Difference Illustrated by Ex- 
amples — American Enterprise Characteristic- 
ally Given to Exhausting Natural Resources 
— Continental Enterprise Characteristically 
Devoted to Realizing Immaterial Resources — 
The Difference Exemplified by American Ex- 
ports and Imports — Contrast between German 
and American Governmental Policy — Evil 
Consequences of the American Tonnage Mania 
— The Curse of Immediacy — Characteristics 
of American Industrial Managers — Modifying 
the Type of Organization the First Step to- 
ward True Ideals and Sound Common-Sense 91 

Chapter V. The Third Principle: Competent 
Counsel 

American Industrial Leadership Character- 
isticallv Self-Reliant — Reluctance to Seek Ad- 



CONTENTS XV 

vice of Specialists — Competent Counsel Neces- 
sarily Derived from Many Minds — The Estab- 
lishment of Efficiency Counsel a Constructive 
Type of Organization — Competent Counsel 
Justified by Many Recognized Examples.... 119 
iapter VI. The Fourth Principle: Dis- 
cipline 

Institutions that Have Been Built upon Dis- 
cipline — Railway Operation an Object Lesson 
— The Meaning of Discipline as an Efficiency 
Principle — Discipline as a Regulator of Con- 
duct — Discipline Exemplified by Nature's Op- 
erations — Esprit du Corps a Species of Dis- 
cipline — Failure of Social Institutions that 
Repudiate Discipline — The Reciprocal Faith 
Inspired by Discipline — It Meets Great Emerg- 
encies — Industrial Disasters Traceable to 
Lack of Discipline — Definition of the Self- 
Executing Discipline which Constitutes an 

Efficiency Principle 135 

Chapter VII. The Fifth Principle: The Fair 
Deal 

Old-Fashioned Conceptions of Organization 
Blind to the Fair Deal — Persistence of these 
Low Ideals in Modern Industry — Acknow- 
ledgement of the Fair Deal Must Begin with 
the Employer — The Fair Deal Essential to 
National Preservation — Proof of this Found in 
the Future Relations of Wage Earners to Na- 
tional Efficiency — Examples of Unfair Deal in 
Industrial and Commercial Management — 
Effects on the Acts and Purposes of Employ- 
ees — The Fair Deal and Wagre Relations De- 
fined — Nine Provisions that Should Constitute 

Standard Practice 167 

Chapter VIII. The Sixth Principle: Reliable, 
Immediate and Adequate Records 

The meaning of Records as an Efficiency 
Principle — The Nature of Records — Object of 
Records — Use of Records — Records of Effi- 
ciency and Cost of Locomotive Repairs — An- 
alysis of Operation Costs Duly Recorded — Re- 
lation between Standard Costs and Recorded 



xvi CONTENTS 

Costs — How Records Aid the Prosecution of 
Efficiency — Quality the First Consideration — 
Fallacy of Reduction of Wages — Efficiency 
and Quality Improved by Higher Payment per 
Unit — What Facts as to Every Operation an 
Efficiency Record Should Show — Relations of 
Cost-Accounting to Efficiency Records — The 
Cost Formula as an Instrument for the Reduc- 
tion of Wastes 205 

Chapter IX. The Seventh Principle: Des- 
patching 

Despatching a Fundamental Principle of 
Nature's Cycles — Examples — Marvels of Des- 
patching in Railway Operation — Absence of 
Despatching in Shop Operations — Examples 
of Resultant Inefficiency — How Despatching 
may Improve Conditions in a Great Organiza- 
tion — Despatching Unstandardized Work More 
Profitable than Standardizing Undespatched 
Work 241 

Chapter X. The Eighth Principle: Standards 
an© Schedules 

Two Kinds of Standards and Schedules — 
Time and Motion Studies a Sub-Division of 
Standards — Typical Schedules of Man-Effi- 
ciency — The Diagram Discussed — Diagrams 
of Standard Performances in Physical Effort 
— The Relation of Wage Systems to Standard 
Performances — Piece-Rates Objectionable be- 
cause They Stimulate Strenuousness instead 
of Efficiency — Establishment and Use of Ra- 
tional Work Standards 261 

Chapter XI. The Ninth Principle: Standard- 
ized Conditions 

Nature's Achievements in Standardization 
of Creature and Environment — Standardizing 
Ourselves to Environment — Standardizing En- 
vironment to Ourselves — Human Achievements 
in Standardizing Conditions — Relations of 
Standardized Conditions to Individual Achieve- 
ment of New Standards — Standards as a Pro- 
gressive Evolution 279 



CONTENTS xvii 

Chapter XII. The Tenth Principle: Standard- 
ized Operations 

Standardized Operations Reached only by 
Observance of Preceding Principles — Details, 
though Appalling in Number, are Successfully 
Controlled by Systematic Approach — Exam- 
ples of Standardized Operations in Manufac- 
ture^ — Progressive Betterment of Performance 
not Hampered by Standardization — The Meth- 
ods of Efficiency Work through the Preceding 
Principles to the Standardization of Operation 
—The Profitable Results of Planning 297 

Chapter XIII. The Eleventh Principle: Writ- 
ten Standard-Practice Instructions 

Race Progress Is Slow until the Records of 
Knowledge can Be Preserved — Ideals, Arts, 
and Crafts Lost through Lack of Written 
Records — Examples of the Advantages of 
Written Records — The Influence of the Code 
Napoleon — How Recorded Instructions Have 
Operated to Increase Naval Efficiency — The 
Operation of the Principle in Industrial Estab- 
lishments — Steps Essential to Introducing 
Standard Instructions in Engineering Works 
— Growth of the Body of Standard-Practice 
Instructions — What Can Be Accomplished 319 

Chapter XIV. The Twelfth Principle: Effic- 
iency Reward 

Desire of Reward a Natural Instinct — It 
Maintains and Stimulates the Preservation of 
the Race — Natural Selection an Automatic 
Payment of Efficiency Reward — Hopeless Per- 
versity of Attempting to Nullify Efficiency Re- 
ward by a Level Wage System — Compensation 
for Work cannot Remain an Exception to the 
Natural Law — The Question of Union Opposi- 
tion — Essential Basis for a Just Efficiency Re- 
ward — Piece-Rates Based upon a Wrong Prin- 
ciple — Conditions under which they may Be 
Made Tolerable — Profit-Sharing not Efficiency 
Reward — A System that Meets the Demands 
of Equity — Time Payments and Bonus Re- 
wards — Halsey, Gantt, and Taylor as Con- 



XV111 CONTENTS 

tributors to a Just Understanding of Correct 
Wage Principles — The Efficiency System of 
Wage Payment in Practical Operation — Its 
Nine Essential Parts — Efficiency Reward 
Brings to their Highest Development Mater- 
ials, Muscle, Mind and Spirit . 341 

Chapter XV. Efficiency Principles Applied to 
Measurement and Cure of Wastes 

Waste Elimination a Fundamental Ideal of 
Efficiency Effort — Every Waste Elimination 
Brings Immediate Reward — Differences be- 
tween Masculine and Feminine Instincts — In- 
tuition and Individuality Characteristically 
Feminine — Organization and Development of 
Principles Essentially Masculine — The Lesson 
Illustrated by History — Wastes Eliminated 
not by Intuition, but through Principles — 
Trusts Originate through Intuition; they can 
Succeed only through Adoption of Principles 
— Testing Plant Efficiency by the Application 
of Principles — Successive Steps in the Better- 
ment of Plant Efficiency — The Method Applied 
to the Steel Corporation — Differences Between 
the Old and the Modern Principles of Account- 
ing — Fundamentals of Modern Accounting Are 
Standards, Efficiencies, Equipments — Why 
Graft could not Prevail where these Standards 
Are Applied 371 

Chapter XVI. Executive Control of Line and 
Staff 

The Philosophy of Efficiency Applied to an 
Industrial Plant — The Best Plant with 
the Best Philosophy of Efficiency Helpless 
without Executive Direction — Supremacy of 
the Strong Man Indispensable — He Must Co- 
ordinate Line and Staff — Not Essential that 
the Executive Be Expert in either Staff or 
Line — Essential That He Have Powers of Di- 
rection and Co-Ordination — Power of Leader- 
ship Exemplified in History and Industry — 
What the Great Corporations might Become 
under Supernal Men, Working through Princi- 
ples to Realize Supernal Ideals 401 



THE TWELVE PRINCIPLES OF 
EFFICIENCY. 



The wise man built his .house upon a rock; and the 
rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds 
blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for 
it was founded upon a rock. But the foolish man built 
his house upon the sand; and the rain descended, and 
the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon 
that house; and it fell; and great was the fall of it. — 
St. Matthew, 7, 24-27. 

He also that is slothful in his work is brother to 
him that is a great waster. — Proverbs, 18, 9. 

By the wisdom of the centuries I speak, 
To the tune of yestermorn I set the truth; 

I, the joy of life unquestioned; I, the Greek; 
I, the everlasting wonder Song of Youth! 

Rudyard Kipling. 



THE TWELVE PRINCIPLES OF 
EFFICIENCY 

Chapter I 

ORGANIZATION AND PRINCIPLES THE 
PRIME INSTRUMENTS FOR EFFICIENCY 



The invisible makes the nation. The nation is not 
made great, it is not made rich, it is not made at all, 
by mines and forests and prairies and water powers. 
Great men make a great nation great, and the quali- 
ties that make men great are invisible. — Lyman 
Abbott. 



THE owners of a large industrial plant 
with many orders ahead desired to 
increase the output from thirteen 
units a month, the highest average up to that 
time, to twenty-three units a month, and to do 
this in ten months. 

The manager of the plant, a man of unusual 
ability but of the old school, had been in charge 
for some time, but knew only one way to de- 
liver the increase, namely, to add to equipment 

3 



4 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

and employ more men. He therefore countered 
the demand of the owners for twenty-three 
units by asking for $500,000 worth of addi- 
tional equipment. Even if this capital invest- 
ment had been possible, it was no solution of 
the difficulty, as it would have taken at least a 
year, probably longer, to secure the new equip- 
ment. 

When matters were in this state — demand 
for increased output by owners, demand for in- 
creased equipment by manager — an investiga- 
tion of the plant was made by two competent 
efficiency engineers of wide experience, who 
submitted a long report of which the conclud- 
ing paragraphs were : — 

Your plant consists of a large 
Machine Shop, 
Boiler Shop, 
Erecting Shop, 
Blacksmith Shop, 
Foundry. 

Having examined into the conditions of each of the 
shops and having consulted with the manager, the 
superintendent, the various foremen, some of the con- 
tractors, and a number of men, we are able to state 
definitely that with some slight physical betterments, 
and provided the present manager, or a man of similar 
disposition be in authority, the output of your shops 
can be increased 60 per cent, without adding to the 
present forces, without adding to the equipment, and 
without increasing the payroll more than 10 per cent, 
and that these results can be gradually attained within 
a period of six months. 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 5 

To accomplish these results certain prin- 
ciples of organization were advocated. The 
organization and principles were adopted and 
applied by the managers, and the results are 
shown by an extract from a letter, written by 
the local official ten months later. 

New York, May 1, 1908. 

It will interest you to know that our output for the 
month of April showed an increase of 69.2 per cent 
over the monthly average of the last fiscal year. 

The average working hours are 9 per day instead 
of 10 as formerly. The payroll reduction is 15 per 
cent, amounting to -8,000 to -10,000 a month less than 
last year. 

The same efficiency engineers were subse- 
quently called to another plant, to investigate 
and to advise. In this case also their principles 
were accepted, their recommendations carried 
into effect through modified organization with 
the following results: 

bc^ boo, bo o o <u wW c * 

V ^ r- >- » -' ^ C " <U"SJ* 

** 5* • S « G S 2c ^ ^-£e «- c ^ 

nj > o v t> o & ^Z X Z? >i(« K cj 1 - 

& <*s <h°§ £h £ £cS£ *&<% 

Sept., '08.... 527 4.69 2,473 $29,380 $11.88 % 

July, '09.... 263 9.04 2,377 15,248 6.41 2 % 

Aug., '09.... 298 10.51 3,133 17,280 5.51 10 % 

Sept., '09.... 312 10.92 3,408 17,394 5.14 17.3% 

It is not to be supposed that two men could 
come from the far west, go into eastern indus- 
trial plants, and through their own familiarity 
with the conditions know better how to direct 



6 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

them than the experienced local managers in 
charge. The men who came out of the west 
were not as well equipped with knowledge of 
operation or devices, were not as well ac- 
quainted with local methods and men, as the 
local managers, but they were far better equip- 
ped with knowledge of a new type of organi- 
zation through which alone efficiency can be 
secured, and they had not only this knowledge 
but also extended and successful experience in 
applying it. 

The difference in achievement between the 
modern man and the men who lived thousands 
of years ago is not an internal difference in 
quality of brain, but the tremendous external 
difference in conditions and equipment. The 
boy with the far-reaching sling knocks out the 
heavily armored spear-wielding giant. 

It is exceedingly difficult to advocate certain 
principles without individuals, tribes, and na- 
tions, unable to free themselves from the per- 
sonal point of view, immediately jumping to 
the conclusion that an attack is being made on 
their competency, their skill. Greek athletes 
could have made good records if they had had 
bicycles, motor cars, and aeroplanes, if they 
had had repeating pistols and rifles; but the 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 7 

arrow, however skilled the archer, does not 
carry as far or as straight as the rifle bullet. 
The principle underlying the rifle is very old — 
that of the blow tube — a very different prin- 
ciple from that of the bow and string ; but the 
man who equips the savage with a rifle makes 
him more powerful than all the armored 
knights of chivalry, and the man who equips 
the modern industrial manager with a new in- 
dustrial application of an old principle of or- 
ganization and accomplishment, gives the me- 
diocre manager a greater possibility of attain- 
ing high efficiency than was ever possessed even 
by the greatest industrial geniuses working 

along the old lines.* 
The men from the west knew the new 

theories because they had applied them on a 
tremendous scale ; they knew how to design and 
operate a new kind of shop control, as different 
from the old as the rifle is from the bow — as 
different as bicycle riding is from walking, fly- 
ing from motoring, Arabic notation from Ro- 
man numerals. These principles in their ap- 
plication to shop control may not appear par- 
ticularly lofty, inspiring, or even interesting 



* "Two kinds of success, that of the rare genius, the other, that 
of the ordinary man who does ordinary things a little better than 
his fellows." — Roosevelt's university address in Norway. 



V 



8 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

to anyone except those whose pocketbooks are 
to be immediately benefited — namely, the plant 
owners and managers, the plant workers, and 
the clients of the plant; but they will evoke 
deeper interest when it is perceived that they 
are fundamental and of universal application; 
that in all ages lasting efficiency depended on 
them, and without them is always impossible; 
that the same principles have been applied else- 
where on a stupendous and noble scale, and 
that it is not men and materials, money, ma- 
chines, and methods that count, but far more 
potently theories and principles. 

We hope to arouse interest in these theories 
and principles and enthusiasm for them, not 
by sordid reference to the shop gains (although 
this is after all a valid ultimate test of their 
value) but by showing their power in recent 
history; and then, we can begin at the begin- 
ning and trace them up from a pre-human past 
into their noble work of empire building, into 
their not less valuable future work of indus- 
trial upbuilding. 

Two of the most remarkable historical events 
of the last forty years are the transference of 
the leadership in Europe from a French Em- 
peror to a German Emperor, the transference 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 9 

of leadership in the oriental North Pacific from 
a Chinese Emperor and a Russian Emperor to 
a Japanese Emperor. 

As each of these startling advances was due 
to the same theories, organization, and prin- 
ciples, and as these theories, organization, and 
principles are equally applicable to industrial 
advancement, it is worth while to understand 
what was done and how it was done, especially 
as the solution of similar problems in all civil- 
ized activities is plainly the task of the Twen- 
tieth Century. 

As to North and South America the Six- 
teenth Century was the era of discovery; the 
Seventeenth Century, the era of appropriation 
and settlement; the Eighteenth Century and 
the first quarter of the Nineteenth Century, the 
era both of making permanent what had been 
gained and of developing natural resources ; so 
the Twentieth Century dawns with the as yet 
unaccomplished task of conservation, of elim- 
inating wastes — wanton and wicked wastes of 
all kinds, wastes that make our civic govern- 
ments a by-word, our destruction of natural re- 
sources a world scandal, our complacent indus- 
trial inefficiency a peculiarly national disgrace, 
since, of all nations, we Americans ought to 
know better. 



10 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

It is this national inefficiency, this national 
wastefulness, this national squandering of cur- 
rent and future material, human and machine 
resources, that can be remedied, if we but be- 
lieve and practice the plainest teachings of re- 
cent history, which are an appropriate intro- 
duction to a statement of efficiency principles 
and organization. 

After 1850, Louis Napoleon was for twenty 
years the dominant figure in European politics. 
The British cultivated his friendship, the Ital- 
ians looked to him for liberation, the Turk 
begged his protection, Russia was humbled by 
him, and Austria sought his alliance. But in 
the little kingdom of Prussia, about the size of 
Colorado, there were two men — Bismarck, the 
Statesman, and von Moltke the Organizer, the 
General — who entered into a partnership to 
make their king the Overlord of Europe. King 
William had succeeded to the throne of Prussia 
in 1861. He was 64 years old, imbued with all 
the mouldy traditions of the past, but he trust- 
ed implicitly his two advisers. 

Prussia was a small, poor, second-rate power 
comprising about one-fourth of Germany and 
Austria in area and population, and it was not 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 11 

conceded by the balance of Germany that 
Prussia had any right to lead. Nobody outside 
of Germany cared a fig for Prussia. 

There was only one way to carry out the 
dream of the King's two advisers. There must 
be: 

(1) A definite plan or ideal, a standard. 

(2) An organization of a form capable of 
attaining and maintaining the ideals through 
the application of principles. 

(3) Equipment of men, money, materials, 
machines, and methods to enable the organiza- 
tion, through the application of principles, to 
attain and maintain the ideals. 

(4) Leaders, competent and forceful, making 
the organization and equipment attain and 
maintain ideals. 

Whether consciously or not this was but an 
imitation of Nature's way. 

Life is the ideal; the body is the organiza- 
tion; eyes and ears, smell and taste, above all 
touch, hands and feet, teeth, clothes, houses, 
weapons, are the equipment; and the brain is 
the leader, the commander. 

The two leaders whose ideals were a tremen- 
dously powerful German empire with the Prus- 



12 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

sian State and King at its head, started to 
create their respective organizations, military 
and diplomatic; they started to equip their or- 
ganizations and tQ. make them so powerful as 
to be able to realize the ideals. Diplomacy and 
intrigue were used to put each opponent in turn 
in a tight place, and then — the army, where- 
with to crush him. We are not concerned with 
the diplomacy. It took great skill to provoke 
each quarrel at exactly the right moment, and 
war was brought on each time in the pleasant 
summer season. Von Moltke's task was how- 
ever far more difficult. He could not count on 
having as many men, as much money, as abun- 
dant equipment, or as much material, as his 
opponents. It was evident to him that invisible 
theories and principles, which his self-sufficient 
opponents did not recognize until too late, 
would have to make up for meagre material 
resources, human lethargy, and awkward 
equipment. 

The struggle, before it began, even in its 
first planning, was to be one of efficiency 
against inefficiency; of efficiency, applying to 
the army all the twelve principles, through a 
new conception and shaping of military organ- 
ization. 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 13 

Seconded by Bismarck, von Moltke advised 
the king to create the army, even though the 
people objected; and their very opposition 
served von Moltke, since, through the disre- 
gard of constitutional limitations, the King 
enabled him to carry into effect his theories 
and principles without meddlesome and incom- 
petent interference. 

To begin the great game, a quarrel with poor 
little Denmark was started. Austria, Prussia's 
great rival in Germany, was invited to become 
an ally in a war against Denmark in 1864. Two 
provinces, Holstein and Schleswig, were 
wrested from Denmark, Prussia occupying 
Schleswig, Austria occupying Holstein. This 
war gave von Moltke a double chance. He tried 
out on a small scale his own organization, and 
studied the weakness of the Austrian organiza- 
tion. In 1866 Bismarck took the next step, 
quarreled with Austria about Holstein, and 
precipitated war June 14, 1866, Prussia pitted 
against nearly all the rest of Germany and 
Austria. Prussia had at that time about 22,- 
000,000 inhabitants, Austria and the balance of 
Germany 59,000,000 inhabitants. From a care- 
ful study of the American civil war, von Molt- 
ke had been learning how not to do it. Bis- 



14 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

marck gave some of the smaller German pow- 
ers twelve hours to come to terms, and then 
almost as rapidly von Moltke's army ate them 
up. Two years to a day after the Battle of 
Gettysburg (which occurred thirty months 
after the firing on Fort Sumter) the Prussians, 
with 225,000 men, on July 3, 1866, nineteen 
days after the declaration of war, defeated the 
Austrians with 262,000 men. In three weeks 
more the Austrians begged for an armistice, 
succeeded by a peace, which transferred the 
leadership of Germany, held by Austria for 
600 years, to Prussia. The whole plan being a 
business venture in empire building, Austria 
had to pay to Prussia 40,000,000 Thaler (about 
$30,000,000) , the smaller States paying in pro- 
portion ; and, as the seat of war had from the 
start been in Austria, the cost of occupation 
fell in addition on the vanquished. Prussia an- 
nexed about 27,000 square miles. We fail to 
recall that any American industrial corpora- 
tion ever showed for the same length of time 
as great gross and net earnings. 

Napoleon III, Dictator, awoke too late. Bis- 
marck and von Moltke were already preparing 
for the next step, the supplanting of the 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 15 

French Emperor by a German Emperor as the 
war-lord of Europe. 

On July 4, 1870, the throne of Spain was 
offered to a German prince, Leopold. This was 
probably part of Bismarck's plan to provoke a 
quarrel. Napoleon stamped his foot once too 
often and for the last time. The French Em- 
peror declared war July 19, 1870. It is said 
that von Moltke was asleep when the telegram 
came, and that when awakened, he said : "You 
will find the plan of campaign in the third 
drawer of my desk," and that he then turned 
over and went to sleep again. This might have 
been true; for, from that moment, over a mil- 
lion men in Germany stepped, ate, filled every 
minute of their time, according to pre-arranged 
plan and schedule. They were called from 
their homes and private businesses everywhere 
throughout the kingdoms and States; all the 
railroads fell in line with all their equipment. 
There was no confusion, no hysterics, no silly 
haste — "Ohne Hast, Ohne Rast." The citizens 
called, found their uniforms and arms ready, 
provisions stored. Because the French plans 
contemplated mobilization in nineteen days, 
von Moltke had planned for eighteen days, 
knowing that this would place the seat of war 



16 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

in France, not in Germany. The French actu- 
ally required twenty-one days to mobilize. They 
were in time 86 per cent efficient, von Moltke 
neither more nor less than 100 per cent effi- 
cient. In eleven days, 450,000 German soldiers 
were mobilized; on August 2, the first battle 
was fought; on August 6 — only eighteen days 
after the declaration of war — one of the blood- 
iest battles occurred. On September 2, forty- 
five days after the declaration, Napoleon and 
his army, beaten at Sedan, surrendered and 
passed as prisoners into Germany. 

What is marvelous is not that one great na- 
tion vanquished another, not that the victory 
came so soon, but that von Moltke's plans were 
so perfect that they were carried out to the 
day, in spite of the desperate resistance and an- 
tagonism of a force as strong as his own, both 
nations having about 40,000,000 inhabitants. 

If it were not so tragically sad, it would be 
to laugh — to compare this war, planned by the 
master organizer of the last century, with our 
own inefficient, procrastinating, ignorantly 
managed and conducted civil war, dragging its 
weary and exhausting length through nearly 
four years, bequeathing a heritage of hate for 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 17 

forty years which it took a foreign war to as- 
suage — bequeathing a stupendous pension bur- 
den, nine-tenths of it the money penalty for in- 
efficiency. 

In the American civil war each side was in- 
spired by its own lofty ideal — the South by 
State rights, the North by hatred of human 
slavery; but neither side knew a single one of 
the twelve principles of efficiency, and so each 
side hopelessly floundered. 

Von Moltke knew all the twelve principles of 
efficiency, and for him war was a serious busi- 
ness undertaking, not a frolic nor a fizzle ; and 
because it was a business undertaking, Bis- 
marck charged up every penny of its cost to 
France, presented the bills, and collected pay- 
ment, $1,000,000,000, with interest added, be- 
sides taking two provinces (Alsace and Lo- 
raine) as a fair profit on a business venture. 

It is not the pomp and glory of that campaign 
that appealed to me as I intimately and per- 
sonally, both in Germany and in France, watch- 
ed it from start to finish, for there was little 
of either; but the calm, merciless skill of the 
play showed me what principles could do when 
carried into effect by a suitable and competent 
organization. It was not the German soldiers 



18 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

who won the war ; von Moltke would have won 
equally well had he applied his principles to 
Italian, Austrian, French, Russian, Japanese 
or Americans. The German recruits were not 
enthusiastic, and were below the European 
average in martial enthusiasm and spirit. It 
was not the German drill or tactics that won 
the war — mere methods, both long ago super- 
seded. It was not the German equipment — 
mere devices — that won the war. The French 
chassepot was a better gun than the German 
Zundnadel, and the mitrailleuse was a better 
field piece than the Germans possessed. It was 
not German money that won the war, for 
France was at once far richer and had far bet- 
ter credit. 

It was von Moltke's principles and organiza- 
tion that won ; and a generation later the same 
organization and principles applied by a differ- 
ent race on the other side of the globe produced 
exactly the same fruit in very similar manner, 
under other able men. 

Because von Moltke supplemented the old 
type of military organization, because he un- 
derstood and applied all the twelve principles, 
the loss of life and limb in his wars was less 
than in great American industrial and railroad 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 19 

corporations, earning a similar amount, and 
never before in the world's history was so great 
a business venture carried through in better 
manner. 

Bismarck died humiliated; von Moltke is no 
more ; but their business teachings live, and the 
modern German Empire whose every activity 
puts Great Britain into a senseless panic is next 
to the greatest example the world has ever seen 
of the result of modern business principles ap- 
plied to the development of a modern world 
power. 

The greatest example of the power of ration- 
al organization and efficiency principles is not 
in the German upbuilding, but in the Japanese 
actual creation in a single generation of a 
great world power. In 1867 Japan was still 
feudal. The merchants' guild and the thieves' 
guild were classed together, both beneath con- 
tempt. Her peasantry was impoverished; her 
finest men and women, feudal dependents with- 
out initiative. When it was still a treason pun- 
ishable by death, a few of the Samurai left 
Japan, not for wealth or amusement or con- 
quest of any kind, but to absorb whatever there 
might be good in the Western civilization and 
to bring it back for use in their own beloved 



20 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

country. They conspicuously, consistently, and 
intelligently put von Moltke's organization into 
effect in upbuilding their fatherland, and also 
applied all the twelve principles, which they had 
probably independently recognized and ac- 
cepted before they began their quest. In thirty 
years, Japan with her 40,000,000 people was 
able to vanquish China with her 400,000,000. 
In another five years, Russia, the colossus of 
the North, that had shattered Napoleon I — 
Russia, the dread of Great Britain, of France, 
of Germany for 90 years — went down in de- 
feat. American sympathies were with Japan, 
but scarcely was the war over before the indus- 
trial organization of Japan, as much superior 
in principle to ours as were her army and navy 
to those of Russia, began to make us cry out in 
cowardly fear. 

It is not the flesh and blood and brains of 
the Japanese that make them industrially dan- 
gerous ; it is not their money, for they are poor, 
not their equipment, for they have but little, 
not their material resources, because they are 
meagre. They are dangerous as industrial com- 
petitors because we are dragging along under 
a type of organization that makes high effi- 
ciency possible — and they are not; because we 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 21 

have not even awakened — and they have — to the 
fact that principles applied by mediocre men 
are more powerful for good than the spasmodic 
floundering of unusually great men. 

Since life began on our planet there have 
always been two types of organization, types 
that Mr. F. W. Taylor characterizes as func- 
tional and as military. The former is an or- 
ganization to build up, the latter an organiza- 
tion to destroy. 

Primitive business was so closely allied to 
raids, filibustering, buccaneering, slave trad- 
ing (not to omit our own American Madagascar 
trade) that it was inevitable that the military 
type should be extended to business organiza- 
tion the world over— a type now known to be 
utterly unfitted to modern business conceptions 
and ideals. It is von Moltke's tremendous gift 
to the world that, although a soldier hampered 
by tradition, he applied to the army the other 
type of organization, the functional type, which 
ought always to have been used in business. 

Because his only chance of winning the great 
game he and Bismarck planned lay in superior 
efficiency, he was forced to study all its under- 
lying principles, and he was equally forced to 
adopt the only type of organization that could 



22 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

apply the principles ; yet so invisible was it all 
that even his keenest enemies saw only the 
familiar cocked hats, epaulettes, gold lace, and 
dangling swords — failed to realize that without 
change of name or interference with rank, even 
for predatory purposes, the old predatory or- 
ganization had passed away and been succeeded 
by the functional, upbuilding, accomplishing or- 
ganization. 

What is all the pride of achievement of the 
great American railroad company compared to 
the quiet, fore-ordained plans of von Moltke in 
which no hitch occurred in the supreme test? 

What is the greatest American corporation 
as a working force, compared to the perfect 
organization of von Moltke, the perfect organ- 
ization of the small group of Japanese leaders 
who have made Japan a great world power? 

The British, French, German and American 
managers of the great industrial corporations 
and railroads are men of great force of char- 
acter, of stupendous ability, of untiring energy, 
devoted to the interests entrusted to them ; but 
because they know only empirically what the 
principles of efficiency are, because even em- 
pirically they apply these principles only spas- 
modically, the plants and railroads whose well- 



ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 23 

being they are so eager to further, are operated 
wastefully beyond belief. The losses in Amer- 
ican railroad operation alone run to a million 
dollars a day — losses preventable through the 
recognition, acceptance, and persistent applica- 
tion of efficiency principles; losses as prevent- 
able as yellow-fever deaths at Panama, or as 
fuel wastes if well-designed engines, boilers 
and furnaces are used. 

Efficiency, like hygiene, is a state, an ideal, 
not a method ; but in America we have sought 
our salvation in methods. 

American industrial organization, even when 
it has good methods, cannot use them, because 
the organization, inherited from antiquated 
British models, is so defective in theory as to 
make an application of the principles as well 
as of good methods impossible. 

In this chapter we have attempted to show 
that conditions of extreme inefficiency in shops 
as well as in empires can be converted in a 
very short time into states of high efficiency; 
that the prime instruments for efficiency in the 
examples cited were not men, materials, money, 
machines, and methods, but theories of organ- 
ization and principles; that inefficiency pre- 



24 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

vails in all American activities because the type 
of organization is one that does not lend itself 
to the application of efficiency principles; that 
the hope of rapid improvement lies in so 
amending or supplementing the usual type of 
organization as to make it possible to apply 
efficiency principles. 

The next chapter will outline and contrast 
the two types of organization, and will show 
why one is not adapted to secure efficiency, and 
why the other one is. 



N 



II 

THE TYPE OF ORGANIZATION THROUGH 
WHICH EFFICIENCY IS ATTAINED 



Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider her ways, 
and be wise. — Proverbs, 6, 6. 

Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, 
they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in 
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. — St. 
Luke, 12, 27. 



Chapter II 

THE TYPE OF ORGANIZATION THROUGH 
WHICH EFFICIENCY IS ATTAINED 

THE poor white trash of the southern 
States and the listless negroes have 
long been a by- word, but we suddenly 
find out that all these people, white and dark, 
are afflicted with a parasite, the hook-worm, 
which saps their vitality, internally slowly 
bleeds their strength away. 

The remedy is not schools, nor churches, nor 
the suppression of the saloon, nor the stern- 
ness of the task-master — all excellent devices; 
the remedy is the elimination of the parasite. 
After this initial betterment, the principles of 
education, of religion, of temperance, of stimu- 
lus, may be confidently applied. 

American organization for operation, wheth- 
er governmental (army, navy, civil), whether 
state or municipal, whether for land-railroads 
or ocean-steamboats, whether educational or 

27 



28 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

religious, whether industrial or commercial, 
proves on investigation to be inefficient, often 
disgracefully so, the efficiency of the output of 
men of militia age of the country as a whole 
being not more than 5 per cent, the efficiency 
of use of materials being not more than 60 per 
cent, the efficiency of equipment facilities not 
averaging 30 per cent. These inefficiency state- 
ments can be verified from the facts, by any 
competent experts, as readily as an assayer can 
duplicate the assay of an ore sample. 

Our material resources are unsurpassed, our 
workers are intelligent, ambitious, versatile, 
our equipment, from farm lands to office build- 
ings, from typewriters up to Mallet compounds 
and down again to telephones, is lavish; yet it 
is all depreciated by an equally stupendous in- 
efficiency. The principles of efficiency are sim- 
ple, are plain, are elementary; they have been 
accepted and practiced empirically for a few 
million years since life began on our planet; 
yet in modern America, we flounder in our pro- 
ductive operations, as hopelessly put back in 
the running as the hook-worm victim in the 
South. 

What is this insidious disease that wastes our 
resources of materials, of human potentiality, 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 29 

of equipment — that prevents the application of 
efficiency principles even as the existence of the 
hook-worm prevents the application of prin- 
ciples of human well-being? 

The industrial hook-worm disease is defec- 
tive organization. 

In the first chapter of this book I have shown 
that a certain type of organization, whether ap- 
plied to the development of empires or to in- 
dustrial shops, produces very high efficiency. 
There is another type of organization, unfor- 
tunately the one almost universally adopted in 
our collective activities, which is incapable of 
applying efficiency principles; and the use of 
this type is responsible for much of modern in- 
efficiency and waste. An air compressor, forc- 
ing hot and squealing air, and a vacuum pump 
softly coaxing cooling air, are one and the 
same machine working on the same cycle in 
opposite directions. With a few simple changes 
the compressor can be changed into the vacuum 
pump. So with a few very small changes a 
disastrous form of organization can be turned 
into a beneficent form. We shall try to make 
clear the difference between these two forms of 
organization, to show why it is impossible for 
one type to apply efficiency principles and im- 



30 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

possible for the other type not to apply them, 
to show that from the beginning of life the 
efficient type has always produced better re- 
sults, and that a long step forward toward 
conservation will have been taken when we 
adopt for our collective life the superior type; 
to show that the change from one type to an- 
other is radical only in theory, not in operation 
— not at all such a change as substituting elec- 
tric traction for steam traction, a prohibitively 
costly undertaking; much more such a change 
as substituting a north window with its mellow 
diffused light for a south window with its fierce 
glare and shadows. 

In primitive times, with that fatuity and per- 
versity which unaccountably characterizes so 
much that is human, we turned to the left when 
we ought have turned to the right. Having two 
forms of organization to choose from — only 
two, the destructively offensive and the con- 
structively defensive — we chose for our indus- 
trial organization the destructively offensive 
type, and it does not work out, never can and 
never will ; while we ought to have chosen the 
constructively defensive type of organization, 
alone suited to the processes of productive up- 
building. 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 31 

The two types of organization are as old as 
life, are therefore far older than humanity, and 
we have had to accept them as part of our in- 
heritance just as we accept the necessity of as- 
similation, of elimination, of reproduction, of 
breathing. But there is no more reason in ad- 
hering industrially to the destructive type of 
organization, since we have learned that the 
other is better, than there is in adhering to 
pack teams and ox carts after the railroad and 
automobile have been perfected. 

To bring out clearly the radical differences 
between the two types of organization, in 
spirit, in effectiveness, and in methods, we 
select two primitive examples, one a plant and 
the other an animal. The plant trusts to the 
generous, often enthusiastic, co-operation of 
forces outside of itself and it therefore draws 
strength of wide and unlimited range. The 
mammal trusts to the occasional, often grudg- 
ing, co-operation of powers identical in kind 
with its own, therefore of limited scope. The 
pathfinder through primeval forest is im- 
pressed with the luxuriant wealth and profu- 
sion of plant life — trees, at their best, 400 feet 
high; is impressed with the comparative 
paucity, pettiness, transitoriness of animal life, 



32 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

whose largest jungle representative is the ele- 
phant, twelve feet high and living at most a 
few hundred years. Plants trust all nature 
and draw help from everywhere ; animals trust 
none but their kind and grow through destruc- 
tion. Even that type of all that is silly and 
innocent, the sheep, will destroy in a few years 
a millennial pasture range. 

The wild rose-bush exemplifies the defensive, 
upbuilding type, of organization. The rose 
stems are covered with sharp thorns so that 
the delicate flowers may not be plucked and 
destroyed by wanton creatures who might just 
as well be browsing on grass or leaves, but the 
color and perfume of the blossoms attract the 
bees, beetles, butterflies, and moths who in re- 
turn for an efficiency reward, the honey, cross- 
fertilize the plants. The petals fade and drop, 
the seed receptacle, an inconspicuous green, 
swells and grows. When ripe, the leaves that 
hid it fall away; it appears red, a tempting 
rose-apple to bird that plucks it, to mammal 
that finds it dropped, but the cradle of the 
seeds is so protected that the rose babies escape 
to grow and flourish where they fall. The rose 
relies on defensive up-building organization, 
calling on water, air, warmth and light, earth, 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 33 

insects, birds and mammals, each taking a 
part, all helping the rose to dot the western 
prairies, to deck the roadsides and moors of 
the New England seaboard, to blanket the 
lovely North Pacific coast. 

Roosevelt gives us the other picture when 
he describes the African baboons who are or- 
ganized for offense, for destruction: 

The baboons were very numerous around this camp, 
living both among the rocks and in the tree-tops. They 
are hideous creatures. They ravage the crops and 
tear open new-born lambs to get at the milk inside 
them; and where the natives are timid and unable to 
harm them they bacome wantonly savage and aggres- 
sive and attack and even kill women and children. In 
Uganda, Cunninghame had once been asked by a native 
chief to come to his village and shoot the baboons, as 
they had just killed two women, badly bitten several 
children, and caused such a reign of terror that the 
village would be abandoned if they were not killed or 
intimidated. He himself saw the torn and mutilated 
bodies of the dead women; and he stayed in the village 
a week, shooting so many baboons that the remainder 
were thoroughly cowed. 

Baboons do not act singly, but in bands 
with leaders, with sentinels posted. Baboons, 
wolves, wild dogs and primitive man are thor- 
oughly organized for offense and destruction. 
It is because the object is offense and destruc- 
tion that evil characteristics are most promi- 
nent — arbitrariness, irresponsible exercise of 
power, harshness, cruelty, with anarchy all 
along the line. 



34 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Some strong male, differing not in kind but 
merely in degree from his fellows, has fought 
his way to the top, is given allegiance, based 
partly on fear, partly on self-interest. He dele- 
gates power, or each lower rank of followers 
usurp power, and this results in anarchy all 
along the line. Are we now writing of the 
African baboons, of the wolf pack, of the 
paleolithic war chief, of the neolithic hunt- 
ing, foraging, plundering, filibustering chief, 
of the enterprising New York Madagas- 
car trader, of the respectable Rhode Is- 
land slaver and rum trader and privateer; or 
are we writing of Roosevelt's land and marine 
experiences as a Rough Rider with our army 
and navy; or are we writing of the shops of 
the great industrial incorporations, of the 
operation and maintenance of our railroads? 
It is all one and the same thing, as they all are 
victims of a common type of organization rest- 
ing on the same principles — individual arbi- 
trariness at the top, usurped and delegated 
power down the line, anarchy everywhere. 

Modern men have lost the fangs and the 
cruel hands of the baboon; in them also his 
savage, cruel instincts are softened. Modern 
sea captains are not such monsters of cruelty 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 35 

as Henry Morgan, modern generals are not as 
ruthless as Caesar, Attilla, Jenghis Khan, Tilly, 
or even Napoleon. Men, thoroughly good, con- 
servative, upright men, with every great up- 
building instinct, are happily at the head of 
most of our great institutions; they are in- 
finitely better than the destructive organiza- 
tions through which they are compelled to 
work, knowing no other ; but the old danger is 
always latent. We who know could fill volumes 
with modern illustrations of the ever out- 
cropping evils due to the destructive type of 
organization. 

Let all who wish to become acquainted with 
a detailed story of humiliating inefficiency, due 
to arbitrary incompetence — at Washington, 
mitigated by usurped power and anarchy every- 
where, read of the difficulties with which a 
great and resourceful leader had to cope even 
in the oldest and most perfected type of offen- 
sive organization, the military: 

The battalion chief of a newly raised American regi- 
ment, when striving to get into a war which the 
American people have undertaken with buoyant and 
light-hearted indifference to detail, has positively un- 
limited opportunity for the display of "individual ini- 

tiative." If such a battalion chief wants 

to get anything or go anywhere he must do it by 
exercising every pound of resource, inventiveness, and 
audacity he possesses. The help, advice, and superin- 



36 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

tendence he gets from outside will be of the most gen- 
eral, not to say superficial, character. He will have to 
fight for his rifles and his tents and his clothes. He 
will have to keep his men healthy, largely by the light 
that nature has given him. When he wishes to embark 
his regiment, he will have to fight for his railway cars 
exactly as he fights for his transport when it comes to 
going across the sea; and on his journey his men will 
or will not have food, and his horses will or will not 
have water and hay, and the trains will or will not 
make connections, in exact correspondence to the 
energy and success of his own efforts to keep things 
moving straight. 

It was on Sunday, May 29, at San Antonio, Texas, 
that we marched out of our hot, windy, dusty camp 
to take the cars for Tampa. There were no proper 
facilities for getting the horses on or off the cars, or 
for feeding or watering them; and there was endless 
confusion and delay among the railway officials. The 
railway had promised us a forty-eight hours' trip, but 
it was four days later that we disembarked, in a per- 
fect welter of confusion. Everything connected with 
both military and railroad matters was in an almost 
inextricable tangle. There was no one to meet us or 
tell us where we were to camp, and no one to issue 
us food for the first twenty-four hours; while the rail- 
road people unloaded us wherever they pleased, or 
rather wherever the jam of all kinds of trains rendered 
it possible. We had to buy the men food out of our 
own pockets, and to seize wagons in order to get our 
spare baggage taken to the camping ground which we 
at last found had been allotted to us 

It was the evening of June 7 when we suddenly re- 
ceived orders that the expedition was to start from 
Port Tampa, nine miles distant by rail, at daybreak 
the following morning; and that if we were not aboard 
our transport by that time we could not go. We had 
no intention of getting left, and prepared at once for 
the scramble which was evidently about to take place. 
As the number and capacity of the transports were 
known, or ought to have been known, and as the 
number and size of the regiments to go were also 
known, the task of allotting each regiment or fraction 
of a regiment to its proper transport, and arranging 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 37 

that the regiments and the transports should meet in 
due order on the dock, ought not to have been difficult. 
However, no arrangements were made in advance; and 
we were allowed to shove and hustle for ourselves as 
best we could, on much the same principles that had 
governed our preparations hitherto. 

We were ordered to be at a certain track with all 
our baggage at midnight, there to take a train for 
Port Tampa. At the appointed time we turned up, 
but the train did not 

We now and then came across a Brigadier-General, 
or even a Major-General; but nobody knew anything. 
Some regiments got aboard the trains and some did 

not At six o'clock some coal cars came 

by and these we seized. By various arguments we 
persuaded the engineer in charge of the train to back 
us down the nine miles to Port Tampa 

The trains were unloading wherever they happened 
to be, no attention whatever being paid to the possible 
position of the transport on which the soldiers were to 
go. Colonel Wood and I had jumped off and started 
on a hunt, which soon convinced us that we had our 
work cut out if we were to get a transport at all. 
From the highest General down, nobody could tell us 
where to go to find out what transport we were to 

have The quay was crammed with some 

ten-thousand men, most of whom were working at cross 
purposes 

The military attaches came out to look on — English, 
German, Russian, French and Japanese. 

We were allotted a transport — the "Yucatan." She 
was out in midstream, so Wood seized a stray launch 
and boarded her. At the same time I happened to find 
out that she had previously been allotted to two other 
regiments — the Second Regular Infantry and the 
Seventy-first New York Volunteers, which latter regi- 
ment alone contained more men than could be put 
aboard her. Accordingly I ran at full speed to our 
train; and, leaving a strong guard with the baggage, 
I double-quicked the rest of the regiment up to the 
boat, just in time to board her as she came into the 
ouay, and then to hold her against the Second Regu- 
lars and the Seventy-first, who had arrived a little too 



38 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

late, being a shade less ready than we were in the 
matter of individual initiative. There was a good deal 
of expostulation, but we had possession; and as the 
ship could not contain half of the men who had been 
told to go aboard her, the Seventy-first went away as 

did all but four companies of the Second 

The transport was overloaded, the men being packed 
like sardines, not only below but upon the decks; so 
that at night it was only possible to walk about by 
continually stepping over the bodies of the sleepers. 
The travel ration which had been issued to the men 
for the voyage was not sufficient, because the meat 

was very bad indeed The soldiers were 

issued horrible stuff called "canned fresh beef." There 
was no salt in it. At the best it was stringy and 
tasteless; at the worst it was nauseating. Not one- 
fourth of it was ever eaten at all, even when the men 
became very hungry. There were no facilities for the 
men to cook anything. There was no ice for them; the 
water was not good; and they had no fresh meat or 
fresh vegetables 

By next morning came the news that the order to 
sail had been countermanded, and that we were to stay 
where we were for the time being. What this meant 
none of us could understand. It turned out later to be 
due to the blunder of a naval officer 

Meanwhile the troop ships, packed tight with their 
living freight, sweltered in the burning heat of Tampa 
Harbor. There was nothing whatever for the men to 

do, space being too cramped for amusement 

So we lay for nearly a week, the vessels swinging 
around on their anchor chains, while the hot water 
of the bay flowed to and fro around them and the sun 
burned overhead. At last, on the evening of June 13, 

we received the welcome order to start 

We knew not whither we were bound, nor what we 

were to do We had a good deal of trouble 

with the transports One of them was 

towing a schooner, and another a scow 

We rolled and wallowed in the sea-way, waiting un- 
til a decision was reached as to where we should land. 
On the morning of June 22 the welcome order for land- 
ing came. 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 39 

We did the landing as we had done everything else — 
that is, in a scramble, each commander shifting for 

himself There were no facilities for 

landing, and the fleet did not have a quarter the 
number of boats it should have had for the purpose. 

Meanwhile, from another transport, our 

horses were being landed, together with the mules, by 
the simple process of throwing them overboard and 

letting them swim ashore, if they could 

One of my horses was drowned. The other, Little 
Texas, got ashore all right. While I was superintend- 
ing the landing at the ruined dock with Bucky O'Neill, 
a boatful of colored infantry soldiers capsized, and 
two of the men went to the bottom; Bucky O'Neill 
plunging in, in full uniform, to save them, but in 
vain. — Abbreviated from Roosevelt's Rough Riders, 
Pages 47-71. 

Mr. Roosevelt has always been the apostle of 
strenuousness. Strenuousness and efficiency 
are not only not the same, but are antagonistic. 
To be strenuous is to put forth greater effort ; 
to be efficient is to put forth less effort. To 
walk four miles an hour is efficient, but not 
strenuous ; to hustle along at six miles an hour 
is exceedingly strenuous, but not efficient, since 
an hour or two of the pace would exhaust the 
walker and indeed incapacitate him for further 
progress. 

To increase speed by using a bicycle is effi- 
cient. Six miles an hour on a bicycle is so 
easy that it is neither strenuous nor efficient. 
Ten miles an hour is efficient but not strenu- 
ous; twenty miles an hour is exceedingly 



40 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

strenuous but not efficient, since it overtaxes 
the man. 

The barn-yard rooster when chased from his 
dung-hill flutters strenuously but not efficient- 
ly. The eagle soaring for hours in the sunlight 
without flapping a wing is efficient but not 
strenuous. Efficiency brings about greater re- 
sults with lessened effort ; strenuousness brings 
about greater results with abnormally greater 
effort. Piece rates are based on the theory of 
strenuousness; standard times and bonus are 
based on the theory of efficiency. The differ- 
ence between the two is philosophic and physio- 
logical. Piece rates are a reversion to savage 
standards; standard times are a step into the 
future, even as the scheduled train is an ad- 
vance over the bringing of the news to Aix, or 
Paul Revere's or Sheridan's ride. 

The efficiency engineer meets everywhere the 
inefficiencies, losses, ravages, disasters, ma- 
terial and moral, always latent, often active in 
wrong organization. To illustrate by instances 
from experience: 

The able president of a two-hundred-million- 
dollar corporation, hearing that piece work re- 
sulted in greater output than day work, ordered 
piece rates put in and made the basis of re- 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 41 

numeration on a few days' notice. A disastrous 
strike followed, costing the corporation $2,000,- 
000, the community being made to suffer from 
violence of all kinds by strikers and their sym- 
pathizers, by officials and their hirelings. This 
president would not have presumed to design a 
steam engine, perhaps not have presumed with- 
out advice to select a typewriter; yet he rashly 
acted on two of the most delicate problems that 
confront any modern corporation, wages and 
efficiency reward. He did not know that effi- 
ciency reward ought to be preceded by the 
careful, systematic, and expert application of 
eleven other principles, of which "Wages" is a 
minor element of one ; he did not know that the 
eleven anterior principles were largely lacking 
in application in his company, and that condi- 
tions were not ripe for any form of efficiency 
reward ; he did not know that even if his com- 
pany had been fitted to adopt the principle of 
efficiency reward, it remained a momentous 
question as to what form should be used, piece 
rates being probably the last that a competent 
expert would recommend. He was not to 
blame. He. had to make a decision, and he did 
not have an organization around him, over him, 
under him, that automatically prevented this 



42 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

mistake, equally disastrous to his company, to 
his employees, and to himself. 

The general superintendent of one of the 
of the largest American industrial plants, tre- 
mendously successful through his great genius, 
power, ability, told me with pride that for five 
months he had refused to allow any shop tools 
or supplies to be bought. He boasted that a 
smith foreman, failing to secure on requisition 
flatter steel, had made flatters out of Krupp 
steel tires which he appropriated for this pur- 
pose. The tool account came down, it is true, 
but at what cost in man-wasted time with 
smooth files, and all other man-supply deficien- 
cies — in diminished output from machine- 
wasted time due to defective belts and all other 
machine-supply deficiencies? 

Industrial arbitrariness by the superinten- 
dent, delegated and usurped power in the fore- 
man, anarchy all along the line ! 

There are more disgraceful examples that 
could be cited in which foremen plundered and 
swindled the men under them, debauched wives, 
violated homes, because the power to employ 
and discharge, to promote and reduce, to aug- 
ment and to lower compensation, had been 
delegated to them. American trade unionism, 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 43 

with all its imported tenets of inefficiency, is 
in large part a justifiable collectivism, alone 
able to cope with some of the worst outrages to 
which individual wage earners have been ex- 
posed ; and it is pathetic that these same wage 
earners, in resorting to unionism, have known 
no better than to adopt all the worst character- 
istics of that form of organization against the 
evils of which they were rebelling. 

A high American railroad official of great 
and long experience told me that no grievance 
committee of wage earners had ever come to 
him with what seemed unreasonable and unfair 
demands that he had not been able to find as 
the original incentive to its action the arbitrary 
injustice and tyranny of some insignificant 
local official, foreman, or boss. 

I have intimately watched the inception, 
progress, and end of three railroad strikes. 
Twice they were precipitated by the arbitrary 
action of irresponsible, yet conscientious and 
able railroad officials. The money lost in these 
two strikes by the employing companies was 
sufficient to establish efficiency operation on 
every American railroad, and under efficiency 
operation strikes are inconceivable. The third 
road won its strike hands down because it spent 



44 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

for defense, preparation, and mitigation of 
evils, one-tenth the sums necessary in the other 
cases for war and destruction. 

In American organization a successful man 
becomes president, he selects his staff, his cab- 
inet and— he puts it up to them. Each in turn 
selects his staff of managers and— puts it up 
to them. The manager selects his superinten- 
dents, and passes the power and responsibility 
on to them. The superintendent selects fore- 
men, and delegates to them the power "to make 
good." The foremen select their workmen, and 
transmit to them the power to do the thing the 
president really wanted done. 

The man at the bottom, with the least spare 
time to plan, the least training, the least com- 
pensation, runs the whole affair. This is the 
type — so usual, so universal, that many will 
show amazement that it is questioned. It is 
the baboon, the wolf -pack, type of organization 
and it is all wrong. 

The wild rose, relying on allies outside of 
itself to aid it, has developed and flourished 
under the defensive up-building type of organ- 
ization, but we need not go so far afield. Plant 
life has no monopoly of upbuilding organiza- 
tion. Among the baboons, among the wolves, 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 45 

among the foxes, among men, the defensive, 
the up-building type of organization also exists, 
but men have not applied it to business. In 
his family life, and he is a most worthy hus- 
band and father, the fox imposes maternity on 
his vixen companion. This is no delegation of 
power, for he is incapable of maternity. He 
imposes a duty and assumes a tremendous re- 
sponsibility, and — he gives the balance of his 
life to doing his part that she may make a full 
success of what he imposed on her. He pro- 
tects, he provides, he feeds her, he watches 
over her. The organization is one for defense 
and up-building, and without it life would 
perish from our planet. The vixen in turn im- 
poses on her young the greater duty of life, 
but in so doing she assumes a crushing burden 
of obligation toward her offspring. She feeds 
them from her own body, she watches over 
them, she trains them and teaches them, and, 
if need be, gives her life for them. She dele- 
gated nothing, but she imposed obligation and 
she gives the balance of her life that they may 
make a full success of what she unwittingly im- 
posed on them. 

That the race of foxes may endure forever, 
the vixen exists for the sake of her babies, not 



46 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

they for her ; the father fox exists for the sake 
of the vixen and her special task, not she for 
him. 

There is, of course, authority running from 
top to bottom, authority commensurate with 
responsibility, greater and stronger authority 
than that inspired by fear, but though the cubs 
obey the mother and the father, the organiza- 
tion is one of defense, of up-building. 

This is the type of organization von Moltke 
imposed on a Prussian army. He left appar- 
ently intact the predatory form ; but he created 
staff, and though it was an elementary and in- 
adequate staff it made his stupendous achieve- 
ments possible. Von Moltke realized that there 
were natural laws superior to any general or- 
ders of his, that the general orders would be 
effective in exact degree as they utilized natural 
laws to the best advantage. He therefore 
created a general staff of specialists, officers, 
students, experts, acquainted with and skilled 
in the knowledge of general laws, and it was 
with their knowledge that he outfitted his 
armies, planned his campaigns, and executed 
his designs. The plans of his general staff pre- 
vented the issuance of orders contrary to the 
laws of nature; it stimulated the issuance of 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 47 

orders in accordance with the laws of nature; 
just as effectually as wheel flanges keep loco- 
motives on the track and as steel rails lessen 
wheel friction, so there was elimination of fu- 
tile waste, the promotion of efficiency. It re- 
quired no revolution, no tearing down of what 
was, to change offense and destruction into de- 
fense and construction. Bismarck's main aim 
was not to conquer Austria or France, but to 
build up Prussia and Germany, and an army 
with a new organization was the instrument. 

The stone, spear or sword was distinctly an 
adjunct to primitive man, but just as distinctly 
modern man is an adjunct to the machine tool, 
to the locomotive, to the twelve-inch gun. We 
would use them automatically if we could, and 
dispense with the man, even as we now drill 
oil and gas wells two-thousand feet deep and 
dispense with a well digger. Having reversed 
the relation of worker to his tools, we must of 
necessity reverse the relation of officer to pri- 
vate, of official to employee; we must reverse 
the administrative cycle. The employee no 
longer exists merely to aggrandize and extend 
the personality of the employer, but the latter 
exists solely to make effective the totally dif- 
ferent function of the employee. 



48 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Modern industry as distinguished from 
primitive industry is run with equipment. It 
is the locomotive that pulls the train, the car 
that carries the freight. They are there for 
this purpose ; this is the inspiration of their de- 
sign, construction, operation and maintenance. 

We would willingly dispense with the loco- 
motive-engineer and fireman if we could; they 
are capable of something better than watch- 
ing signals and shoveling coal. The only ex- 
cuse for putting human beings on such work 
is that the equipment used still requires human 
supervision. Similarly, in the shop, the equip- 
ment and its purpose are the main considera- 
tions and the duty of the machinist is primarily 
to his equipment. As we rise in the line we 
find each higher grade legitimately existing 
solely for the benefit of what is below, not for 
the amusement of what is above. The foreman 
is there, not to relieve the superintendent of 
responsibility, but to direct the men on the 
machines operating to repair the locomotives 
pulling the freight. The general manager is 
there for the sake of the superintendents, the 
vice-presidents are there for the sake of the 
managers and the president is there for the 
sake of the vice-presidents. 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 49 

Ideals may have been imposed or have been 
conceived by the president— the plan, perhaps, 
to develop a continent. The instrument used is 
a corporation, whose efficiency reward is divi- 
dends earned by carrying freight and passen- 
gers. These ideals of development, of earning 
capacity, remain ; but to carry them out natural 
laws must be observed, these laws being effi- 
ciently taught by those qualified by study and 
experience to teach and direct. The laws are 
applied by officials each of whom is servant to 
the men over whom he has directing control. 
In vain does president or vice-president, man- 
ager or superintendent, issue orders and dele- 
gate power under current organization. Knowl- 
edge and ability, desire and interest, become 
diluted with every spreading step. 

It is within my knowledge that the able, con- 
scientious, and indefatigable chief engineer of 
the greatest constructive enterprise the world 
has ever undertaken was advised that the effi- 
ciency was very low, not aggregating much 
over 50 per cent, and of the remedies. He was 
offered, free of charge, efficiency staff advice. 
He did not avail himself of this offer because 
he belonged to the old school, because he did 
not know that standards could be established, 



50 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

much less realized, although in sanitation he 
accepted fundamental organization and author- 
ity; and so the actual results under him are 
costing two hundred million dollars more than 
they should have cost if he had been von 
Moltke, if he had had von Moltke's conception 
of modern organization. 

With millions of flowing details, each sep- 
arately elusive as one among millions of 
buzzing insects, the task seems hopeless and 
staggers us by its immensity, until we remem- 
ber that honey bees, the most independent of 
union workers, have, as a union, gratefully 
accepted efficiency administration; that dele- 
terious mosquitoes have been suppressed at the 
Isthmus of Panama by preventing their birth ; 
that the task of modern organization is to con- 
trol millions of details through a staff of 
specialists who supplement each working unit 
from tool, machine, implement, up to president 
and to corporation. 

The central part in railroading is the loco- 
motive. The one essential for a locomotive is 
to stay on the track. This is an absolutely 
modern conception. There was no such idea 
in the centuries of the pyramids, nor even in 
the days of Napoleon and of Robert Fulton. 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 51 

Because it is modern, an organization has been 
created to see that it works. One might evolve 
the operation of a modern railroad from the 
wheel flange. The presidents and their staffs 
dictate a few letters each day, perhaps a hun- 
dred thousand in all; but that rails may stay 
in place and resist the side pressure of the 
wheel flange, two-thousand five-hundred million 
spikes are inspected every day by the humble 
track walker, and though the train runs under 
the supreme control of conductor, of engineer, 
of fireman (as much as the dray runs under the 
control of its driver) the difference lies in the 
fact that all the departments of track mainte- 
nance, of equipment maintenance, and half the 
operating department, exist solely for the pur- 
pose of moving the wheels on the rails, of 
transmitting safely 2,600 horse power through 
six half-inch squares of frictional contact. 

This is a stupendous result empirically 
achieved, since as yet but little has been stand- 
ardized as to either track, motive power, equip- 
ment, or operation, and no cost efficiency stand- 
ards have ever been theoretically established 
as possible ideals. 

The defective wolf -pack type of organization 
which still controls American railroads, Amer- 



52 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ican industrial plants, is one in which a chief 
issues arbitrary orders to his subordinates ex- 
pecting them somehow or other to execute them. 
The perfected organization for industrial up- 
building and efficiency is one in which special- 
ists formulate the underlying principles, in- 
struct as to their application, and relentlessly 
reveal both their observance and neglect. 

It is of minor importance how the knowledge 
and experience of specialists is made available 
for the control and guidance of all line officials. 
Independent accounting firms impose their 
checks on even the greatest corporations. In- 
dependent efficiency specialists might well im- 
pose more profitable and important checks on 
the greatest corporations. The same end 
might be attained from an efficiency engineer, 
advised by an efficiency board, holding a posi- 
tion of efficiency authority on a president's 
staff, even as comptrollers hold positions of 
authority as to accounting. 

Accounting, however accurate and minute, 
cannot of itself bring about efficiency. Its 
ideals are charges, credits, and balances, with 
authority for either charge or credit. The only 
standards it can possibly set up are those of 
former attainment, the only inefficiency it can 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 53 

point out is the failure to realize a former at- 
tainment. Accounting is unable either to set 
or attain ideal standards. Yet no modern busi- 
ness presumes to run without some kind of ac- 
counting. This is embryonic recognition of the 
need of staff regulation. Accounting in all its 
phases is a minor division of one of the twelve 
efficiency principles, trustworthy, immediate 
and adequate records. The eleven other prin- 
ciples are none of them less important than 
records, some of them more important. 

A modern undertaking of any kind will be 
prepared to operate efficiently when each mi- 
nute operation can attract to itself all the re- 
quired knowledge and skill in the universe. It 
is only through a qualified staff, applying as 
needed to every detail the twelve principles of 
efficiency, that we can build up from the bot- 
tom instead of futilely dictating from the top. 

How, practically, should this staff be formed 
and made effectively operative? No patent 
medicine exists that is a universal tonic for all 
forms of debility. No two organizations are 
alike, either in their merits or in efficiencies, 
and the object of staff is to provide what is 
missing, whether in organization, recognition 
of efficiency principles, or their application. 



54 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

It is evident that there ought to be a con- 
trolling efficiency engineer, even as there is a 
comptrolling accountant or auditor. The 
comptroller as to accounts acts as a funnel into 
which is drawn all the best experience of the 
world as to accounting, and after filtration it 
is carried authoritatively down the line and 
applied where needed. A competent librarian 
acts as an intermediary between all the knowl- 
edge of the universe collected in books, and the 
great miscellaneous reading public seeking in- 
formation. An efficiency engineer ought simi- 
larly to act as a funnel, being equipped to 
gather from all available sources whatever is 
of operating value for the organization he is 
advising. 

Just as it is the business of the comptroller 
to apply accounting principles, so is it the busi- 
ness of the efficiency engineer to apply to all 
operations the twelve principles of efficiency. 
The duty of the executive desiring efficiency, 
who has accepted the defensive, upbuilding 
type of organization by appointing an efficiency 
chief, is not to demand details but to demand 
a certain efficiency — whether 80, 90, 100 or 110 
per cent — and he should make himself suffi- 
ciently familiar with the twelve efficiency prin- 



EFFICIENCY TYPE OF ORGANIZATION 55 

ciples to apprehend their bearing on ultimate 
efficiency, thus qualifying himself to second 
and make operative the plans of his expert. If 
he waives the attainment of any definite excel- 
lence, he may set up his own limiting standards 
as to each of the twelve principles and instruct 
his efficiency engineer to accomplish what he 
can under the limitations imposed. Everybody 
knows that a horse trotting a mile in two min- 
utes can be secured, and that the mile will be 
trotted in this limit if every condition required 
for success is provided. On the other hand, a 
wagon may be loaded with 5,000 pounds, a mile 
measured over a bad road, and the horse and 
driver told to do the best they can. They may 
do well, but it will not be a two-minute per- 
formance. 

In industrial operation, a whole plant — a 
whole railroad, for instance — can be brought 
up to the highest practicable efficiency if the 
principles are applied by a master mind, using 
a properly equipped organization. Even a 
Napoleon forced to use a defective organization 
and emasculated principles can attain at best 
mediocre results. An incompetent head, if sup* 
plemented by a perfect organization, will often 
do little harm, as has so often been shown in 



56 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

the progress of England under some no-account 
kings. 

An inferior leader, however, relying on de- 
fective organization, without ideals, is bound 
to go down in defeat and to drag down with 
him all he controls. 



Ill 

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: CLEARLY 
DEFINED IDEALS 



Life's just a matter of farming — of finding fertile 
soil in a good field — of breaking ground and being 
patient. The harvesting comes last — the main work 
must be done while the least results are showing. — 
Herbert Kaufman n. 

Make your chart before you start. Know what 
you're after before you start out for it. — Herbert 

Kaufmann. 

Each wakening song and glint of green 
And Earth's new blossom crieth: "See, 

Life's measure is not what hath been, 
But what may be!" 

Charles Buxton Going. 

He only seems to me to live and to make wise use 
of life who sets himself some serious work to do and 
seeks the end of a task well and skilfully performed. 
— Sallust. 

If a man does not know to what port he is steering, 
no wind is favorable to him. — Seneca. 



Chapter III 

THE FIRST PRINCIPLE: CLEARLY DE- 
FINED IDEALS 

ASSUMING an organization adapted to 
their application, it will be found that 
efficiency principles, although all inter- 
related, all necessary to each other for highest 
results, nevertheless stand in a logical sequence. 
The first principle is a clearly defined ideal. 
In the earlier days of American manufactur- 
ing and transportation development, a century 
ago, a bright young journeyman who started 
out # to manufacture some special line was very 
definitely aware of what he intended to make 
and how the work was to be done. He knew 
what he wanted. At the present time, in large 
plants men succeed to authority by transfer or 
by promotion and are very often without 
definite conceptions of the purposes for which 
the plant is working. Workers and foremen at 
the lower end of line organizations are so far 

59 



60 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

from the "Little Father" or from the "Big 
Stick" who dictates all policies, who alone is 
responsible for organization, for delegation of 
power, and for supervision, that they are 
driven to create minor ideals and inspirations 
of their own,, these being often at variance with 
the ideals of those above them. If all the ideals 
animating all the organization from top to bot- 
tom could be lined up so as to pull in the same 
straight line, the resultant would be a very- 
powerful effort; but when these ideals pull in 
diverse directions, the resultant force may be 
insignificantly positive — may, in fact, be nega- 
tive. 

This condition of subsidiary deleterious and 
conflicting ideals is very common in all Amer- 
ican plants, as well as great vagueness and un- 
certainty as to the major ideal, even among the 
higher officials, as we shall try to show by vari- 
ous examples which could be duplicated by 
every experienced manager in the country. 

A handy man in a railroad repair shop ex- 
amined cylinders for cracks. These were often 
so unimportant that they could be safely re- 
paired by a patch, but in other cases a new 
cylinder had to be ordered. A patch may cost 
$30, a new cylinder $600. The handy man 



IDEALS 61 

swelled with pride when his recommendation 
for a new cylinder was heeded. He boasted to 
his wife and fellows of the confidence placed 
in him and the importance of his work. When 
in doubt, he reported always in favor of a new 
cylinder; and it was easier to accept his rec- 
ommendation than to institute a separate re- 
visional examination to be made by a man 
scarcely better qualified. The ideals of econ- 
omy and promptness were submerged, and the 
conflicting ideal of individual aggrandizement 
substituted. 

A large plant was filled with machinery for 
turning out work. Some of these machines 
were automatic and some hand-operated. The 
automatic had been introduced to lessen ex- 
penses and delays. The superintendent of the 
department was an ardent patriot and church- 
man ; not a man was employed by him who was 
not recruited from his own nationality and 
church. He had installed piece rates, singular- 
ly inappropriate, since volume of work fluctu- 
ated suddenly between wide limits. When work 
fell off, instead of doing it all on the automatics, 
he shut these down, and had it all done by hand 
so as to give employment to his piece workers. 
His ideals were not "best product in shortest 



62 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

time at least expense" but "largest amount of 
employment and reward to fellow-countrymen 
and co-religionists." This superintendent being 
unsupplied with ideals by the management, had 
created his own. 

In another plant twenty-four men were work- 
ing in the tool room. This was an excessive 
force, and the specialist in charge of tools al- 
lowed it gradually to shrink through resigna- 
tions to eighteen men. Suddenly six new men 
reported for duty in the tool room, engaged by 
the general foreman. When the specialist in- 
terviewed him on the subject he stated: "My 
allowance for tool room is twenty-four men. If 
I get along without this number my allowance 
may be curtailed. Later when I need the men 
I may not be able to secure them. I propose to 
maintain the allowance whether there is work 
or not." It took a long time to convince this 
foreman : — 

First, that twenty-four men were not needed. 

Second, that if scheduled work made fifty 
men necessary he could have them. 

Distorted ideals placed him in antagonism 
to the main purpose of the management. 

In another plant, a general superintendent 
was very averse to any reduction of men below 



IDEALS 63 

one thousand. He was anxious to turn out 
more work, was willing to curtail hours of the 
thousand employed, but to fall below one 
thousand, even though they voluntarily dropped 
out, seemed to him to be lowering his own rank 
since he had worked for years to reach the posi- 
tion of superintendency over a thousand men. 
Economy, efficiency, were all waived on account 
of a perverse ideal — personal pride. 

The general superintendent of a plant em- 
ploying twelve-thousand mechanics was firmly 
convinced that the only way to turn out a large 
volume of work was to employ more men. He 
seemed to think that men could be piled into one 
side of the balance scale and volume of work 
into the other and that men would pull up the 
work by their gross weight. On one occasion 
he sent out an order that economy was not the 
object, but the production of output, and that 
the force was to be increased to the maximum. 
He ran up expenses $500,000 in five months and 
raised his unit costs far above what they had 
been, far above those of his competitors, far 
above what they retreated to when he was re- 
lieved of authority. A false numerical ideal 
worked at contrary purposes to true efficiency 
ideals. 



64 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

The president of a great industrial corpora- 
tion authorized standard-practice policies, then 
entered into contracts with clients on the basis 
of material, direct labor, and a percentage on 
direct labor. When it was pointed out to him 
that increased efficiency would mean fewer 
hours of direct labor, therefore less pay and 
less percentage for the same work, he promptly 
solved the difficulty by relieving the standard- 
practice advisor from the duty of offering fur- 
ther unpalatable advice, and by forbidding the 
application of efficiency methods to the shop in 
question. 

In the early days of railroad construction all 
over the world, false conceptions and ideals 
greatly increased cost and left a legacy of in- 
efficiency that centuries may not be long enough 
to obliterate. 

The British engineers set up such high 
standards of grade, curvature, and double 
tracking, together with such low standards of 
clearance, as to double the initial cost of all 
British roads and curtail forever their capacity. 

It is told of King Louis I of Bavaria that 
when he took his initial ride on the newly con- 
structed first rail line in his kingdom, he ex- 
pressed great disappointment that there was no 



IDEALS 65 

tunnel, so the line was relocated and made to 
run through a hill. 

Emperor Nicholas of Russia when deferen- 
tially asked by his engineers how the line was 
to be located between St. Petersburg and Mos- 
cow, took a ruler and pencil and ruled straight 
lines between the two cities. 'That is the loca- . 
tion, gentlemen!" It cost $337,000 a mile, the 
distance about 400 miles. The railways in Fin- 
land, where staff advice was heeded, cost 
$23,000 a mile. 

Americans feel like smiling scoffingly at these 
mistakes, but was this arbitrary action any 
worse than that of a Secretary of the Navy 
who, without investigation and in spite of re- 
monstrance by the naval board of construction, 
ordered the "Texas" built exactly according to 
the discordant purchased plans for two differ- 
ent vessels ? No wonder the "Texas" was always 
a monstrosity ! But it has at last served a really 
useful end under the name "San Marcos" in 
being used as a target to test the accuracy and 
power of the big guns on the newer battleships. 

What also shall we think of that American 
transcontinental road which having a water 
level between two points, 384 miles apart, de- 
liberately abandoned the water level and put 



66 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

in 2,500 feet of mountain climbing and as many 
of descent between the same points, the officials 
after all failing to secure from a little western 
city the bonus for which they had sacrificed 
good location for all time. 

In all these instances, from handy man with 
cracked cylinder to king, emperor, or knave rul- 
ing a railroad location, there is a definite ideal, 
however bad, consistently pursued; and when 
these ideals stand in dependent sequence, the 
result becomes exceedingly costly. The handy 
man orders a $600 cylinder instead of a $30 
patch; his foreman, wishing to employ as many 
of his church members as possible, has the 
cylinder made on an inferior machine, with high 
piece rates; the general foreman fills the tool 
room with unnecessary men who become busy 
doing useless work at heavy expense in mate- 
rials and overhead expense; the shop superin- 
tendent is content as he sees the men under 
him pass the one-thousand mark and joyfully 
acquiesces in the general superintendent's order 
to add fifty per cent to the force. Under this 
sequence, the making of an unnecessary $600 
cylinder becomes almost a necessity and the 
handy man is promoted on account of his skill 
as a work provider. The 2,500 feet of mountain 



IDEALS 67 

grade makes many additional locomotives nec- 
essary, so there are many more opportunities to 
make new cylinders instead of patching old 
ones. 

These are examples of the cankering effect 
of low or lateral ideals, but perhaps even great- 
er loss results from vague ideals and from per- 
sonal impulse. 

At the siege of Sebastopol the officers at din- 
ner in the wardroom of a man-of-war were 
astounded to hear the big siege gun boom sev- 
eral times, with ^explosions of midshipmen's 
laughter afterward. Each firing of the gun cost 
$250. Investigation showed that bets were up 
between the middies as to which one could make 
a donkey move in the public square, and each 
was taking a shot in turn — with no damage to 
the donkey. 

An engineer poured onto the ground a gal- 
lon of 40-cent oil in order to have the tinsmith 
solder a leak in a 15-cent can. A railroad track 
foreman and gang were recently seen burying 
under some ashes and dirt a 30-foot steel rail. 
It was less trouble to bury it than to pick it up 
and place it where it could be saved. 

A young engineer in railroad service started 
out to spend some $750 for photographic ap- 



68 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

paratus, evidently laboring under the impres- 
sion that if he only spent money enough he 
could overcome personal, meteorological, op- 
tical, and other limitations to good work. 

The superintendent of a plant ordered a 
large automatic lathe to make crank pins from 
the solid bar. He had no ideals of his own, 
but vaguely felt that an automatic lathe ought 
to do cheaper work. When wire is cut into 
small screws it is the work that gives value, 
not the material; but in a crank pin it is the 
material that costs more than the work, and 
the cost of waste of new material on the auto- 
matic was greater than the total cost of scrap 
material, drop-forging, and turning by a boy 
under the old method. 

The American mind is alert; men as in- 
dividuals have been successful in proportion to 
their initiative; they have made great indi- 
vidual successes and also great individual fail- 
ures. 

It is not an accident that an American re- 
porter was sent to find Livingston and that an 
American explorer forced his way to the North 
Pole. This reckless confidence in impulses, 
this reliance on individual initiative, is respon- 
sible for many failures and even if wild advice 



IDEALS 69 

is not always followed, it is alarming that it 
can be so confidently offered. 

At the time of the planning of the Grand 
Trunk Pacific Railway, a brilliant young sur- 
veyor and railroad engineer wrote a thesis, 
urging that the gauge of this new line be made 
30 feet, freight cars be made large enough to 
handle 1,000 tons, and all the buildings in the 
new villages, towns and cities be erected in 
standard cement sections. Happily this young 
man's power was not commensurate with his 
imagination, but it is not always so. Not only 
do individuals make tremendous blunders, but- 
corporate bodies make greater ones, because, 
not being composed of specialists, they are not 
able to curb the initiative of a strong-willed 
leader. As a consequence, clearly defined ideals 
are lacking and this relative lack will have to 
be pointed out along general lines, using for 
illustration the seven wonders of the ancient 
world, the seven wonders of modern times, and 
in comparison with them seven great American 
enterprises. 

There were seven ancient wonders of the 
world, each one of them a great work, nobly 
carried out. Even after the lapse of conturies, 
moderns of alien races can recognize and sym- 



70 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

pathize with the ideals that inspired these 
wonders. One of the tests of a definite ideal 
is that we can apprehend it even if we cannot 
always sympathize. 

The oldest wonder-work of man is Egyptian 
— the great pyramid — at once a tomb and an 
astronomical instrument. The last ancient 
wonder was also Egyptian, the Pharos light- 
house at Alexandria to direct the floating com- 
merce of the old world to this great city. One 
of the modern wonder-works is also Egyptian, 
the Suez Canal, so that through four millen- 
niums Egypt has done a full share. 

We can sympathize with the desire to have 
the largest and highest tomb ever constructed 
so that the bodies of king and of queen, pre- 
served against decay, may lie in royal state 
until the time of resurrection. We can sym- 
pathize with the conception of the great light- 
house, built by King Ptolemy Philadelphos — 
even with the trick of the architect Sostratos, 
who engraved his own name in the solid stone, 
but hid it by a layer of perishable cement in 
which he engraved the king's name. 

Of the remaining five ancient wonders one 
was the hanging gardens of Babylon — a pe- 
culiarly appropriate glorification of irrigated 



IDEALS 71 

tropical vegetation which has always been able 
to support the densest population, a power that 
may in time turn the tide of civilization back- 
ward from Canada, Northern Europe and 
Northern Asia, back from Argentine to tropi- 
cal America, to tropical islands. The other 
four wonders were Greek, one of them the 
temple of Diana at Ephesus, one the tomb of 
King Mausolus erected by his widow, one the 
Colossus of Rhodes, spanning with outstretched 
legs the entrance to the harbor, and the 
seventh the master work of Phidias, the gold- 
ivory statue of Jupiter at Olympia. There was 
faith or hope or love or beauty or civic pride 
in each of these seven wonders. 

Of the seven modern wonder-works of the 
world, not one is American. One of them, 400 
years old, had its inspiration in religion — St. 
Peters at Rome, the largest church ever built; 
the second, 100 years old, is the greatest trium- 
phal arch ever erected, commemorating the vic- 
tories of the great conquerer Napoleon I; the 
other five are modern engineering works. It is 
typical of the changed ideal of the ages that 
only one of the ancient wonders was utilitarian, 
and only one of the modern wonders is relig- 



72 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ious, five being very distinctly utilitarian; yet 
noble ideals gave them all birth. 

Of the utilitarian works the Suez Canal 
easily comes first. It shortens the sea route 
from northern Europe to the Orient by 5,000 
miles, between certain ports more than half. 
The canal was begun in 1859, estimated to cost 
$30,000,000 and to be finished in 1864. Its 
actual cost was $80,000,000 and it was opened 
in 1869. The ideal was realized, but none of 
the other eleven efficiency principles was thor- 
oughly applied, most of them not at all; hence 
both the double time and trebled cost. 

The next great engineering work was also 
French, the Eiffel tower, rising 1,000 feet into 
the air, at once the highest structure erected 
by man and the prototype of modern American 
steel construction, which as a matter of course 
followed when passenger elevators or lifts were 
made practical. 

The third great wonder is the Firth of Forth 
bridge; cantilevers, similar to three pairs of 
great Eiffel towers, each pair joined at its 
base, each half stretching out horizontally 900 
feet without end support. This bridge is mas- 
sive in design because wind pressure is more 
dangerous than train load. 



IDEALS 73 

The fourth modern wonder is the St. Gott- 
hard tunnel, 12 miles long, under the Alps. 
There was a Brenner railroad route over the 
Austrian Alps; a Mt. Cenis tunnel under the 
French Alps; but Italy, Switzerland and Ger- 
many combined to divert the century-old trade 
between south and north to a shorter new 
route, the key to the situation being the long 
tunnel, more than twice as long as any Amer- 
ican railroad tunnel. This enterprise almost 
failed because the workmen, hygienically neg- 
lected, died in great numbers, killed by an 
intestinal parasite similar to the hook-worm. 
The doctors ascribed the mortality to the work 
underground. The parasite has recently ap- 
peared in the United States, and may prove as 
serious a scourge as the hook-worm. 

The seventh and last of the modern wonders 
are the twin cousin ships, the "Olympic" and 
the "Titanic," conceived and designed to re- 
store to Great Britain the blue ribbon of the 
sea. Of these seven wonders one belongs to 
Italy, one jointly to Italy and Switzerland, 
three belong to France, and two to Great Brit- 
ain. An ideal definitely conceived in advance 
and tenaciously realized is manifest in each, 
and in most of them other efficiency principles 



74 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

are applied, in some only in embryonic vestiges, 
in others in advanced form — notably in the two 
.steamers, which as to cost, time of completion, 
and performance, realized expectations. 

With these fourteen wonders, each with its 
own field, we may compare seven great Amer- 
ican works of which none is religious, none a 
monument to beauty, while the utilitarian value 
of five of them is doubtful. 

The Panama Canal, easily the costliest en- 
gineering work ever undertaken, is being pros- 
ecuted with vigor, and, thanks to the discovery 
of the yellow-fever mosquito and its suppres- 
sion, a lock canal will be finished at a cost of 
about $600,000,000. Of twenty great minds se- 
lected by lot, no three would agree as to the 
ideal back of this great work. Mr. Roosevelt 
is entitled to speak with more authority than 
any one else, and his reasons for its building 
are also those of Goethe — that it was a work 
that some one wovdd be tempted to undertake, 
some time, and that the United States was 
manifestly the proper party. 

This is vague and uninspiring. The canal, in 
times of piping peace, when a navy is wanted 
for minor police duties only, ought indeed to 
lessen the need for a double fleet, one in each 



IDEALS 75 

ocean; but those who favor a strong American 
navy, capable of holding its own against such a 
combination as Great Britain and Japan, scoff 
at the canal as a substitute for a strong navy. 
They know full well that in case of war with 
strong maritime powers either entrance to the 
canal could be made exceedingly dangerous by 
floating mines, by submarines, by aeroplanes; 
that it might be easy to destroy the canal itself 
either by damaging the locks, damaging the 
dam of the Chagres River, or sinking some 
vessel in the canal. If, for self -protection, it is 
imperative for the United States to maintain 
maritime strength both in the Atlantic and 
Pacific, it is not safe to risk the national honor 
and supremacy on any such device as a canal 
trusting that it will work like a watch in war 
time. 

The next in rank of great American engi- 
neering works are the new railroad terminals 
in the city of New York costing about 
$300,000,000. 

There are engineers who consider big pas- 
senger terminals a survival of the time when 
English coaches started from some central 
hostelry. Central terminals are perhaps a con- 
venience to through passengers, with trunks; 



76 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

never to local passengers without trunks. 
Passengers with trunks are very few, even in 
the fast through trains. It is possible that 
these great terminals have been built to ac- 
commodate the few hundred passengers who 
have trunks ? The 500,000 people who go to and 
return from Coney Island on single hot sum- 
mer holidays have not required great termin- 
als; the million and a half of visitors handled 
on Chicago day at the Columbian Exposition 
did not require $100,000,000 terminals ; the hun- 
dreds of thousands of passengers handled daily 
at 42d Street subway or at Brooklyn Bridge 
have not required palatial terminals. In fact, 
these great crowds would neither gather nor 
could they be handled if they had to assemble 
at an initial terminal, and debouch from an 
arriving terminal, both far from their homes. 
Passengers want to be picked up at their doors, 
landed at their doors, like letters ; they do not 
want the plan, now obsolete even in villages, 
of delivering themselves like letters at the cen- 
tral post-office and collecting themselves like 
letters from the general delivery or poste 
restante. 

Nothing is more convenient than the present 
plan of checking trunks from house to house 



IDEALS 77 

in cities far apart, for a charge of one dollar, 
nothing more convenient than to drop from 
business office in New York into subway ten 
minutes before train departure and go to Se- 
attle, Portland, San Francisco or Los Angeles, 
winter or summer, needing neither hat, top coat, 
nor umbrella since the traveler is never with- 
out cover, and if transfer has to be made it is 
more comfortable and easier to make it from a 
Denver train to the Santa Fe flyer at La Junta, 
Colorado, with its station, than to make a simi- 
lar change in a great New York, Chicago, Phil- 
adelphia, or Washington terminal. The great 
problem of city traffic is to secure distribution, 
to scatter foci, to dissolve congestion. Ter- 
minals of necessity create and increase conges- 
tion. Physically or financially, the ideals justi- 
fying these great terminal expenditures are not 
startlingly apparent. Material and mainte- 
nance charges on these great works, if distrib- 
uted to each incoming and outgoing trunk, or 
even to each going and coming through passen- 
ger, would give a striking modern illustration 
of Horace'^ dictum that no artist makes a moun- 
tain travail to bring forth a mouse. 

The Manhattan transfer station of the Penn- 
sv^^nia Railroad, the 125th Street station of 



78 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

the New York Central Railroad, are as con- 
venient as the big terminals are inconvenient. 
One wonders why one or both of these great 
companies did not acquire financing and direct- 
ing control of the New York subways, run on 
them from every part of the city specially col- 
ored trains, gathering passengers at every ex- 
press station, landing them directly at the 
transfer stations, where without long walk or 
loss of time, through and even local steam 
trains could be boarded to every part of the 
United States. 

An arrangement of this kind would have 
added vastly to the convenience of the passen- 
gers, and would have saved a railroad invest- 
ment of $300,000,000, since the subways are al- 
ready paying institutions. 

The third great American enterprise is the 
New York barge canal. Railroad men, keenly 
alert as to its folly, assert that the money to be 
spent in the barge canal would build, equip, and 
operate without freight charges a railroad be- 
tween Buffalo and the Hudson, capable of hand- 
ling ten times as much freight in the course of 
a year. A barge canal built by the State seems 
a roundabout way of curbing and limiting 
dreaded hypothetical railroad extortions, since 






IDEALS 79 

the St. Lawrence River and Montreal route 
more or less fixes export rates from all Ameri- 
can ports during the open season of navigation 
for canal and river. 

The fourth great American projected under- 
taking is the improvement of internal water- 
ways. It is assumed that the railroads are un- 
controllable, although a single growl by the In- 
terstate Commerce Commission causes a sense- 
less decline of values in Wall Street. It is 
assumed by some that internal water transpor- 
tation, subject to all the vague uncertainties 
of low water, flood, and frost, can be made so 
cheap as to bankrupt the railroads, although 
the Mississippi from St. Louis to the sea, open 
the year round, is paralleled by dividend-pay- 
ing railroads. Railroad operation with its chro- 
nometer trains 99.97 per cent reliable between 
terminals 1,000 miles apart has in this respect 
realized an exalted and noble ideal not to be 
undermined and curtailed by the return to ob- 
solescent canals and river highways. 

Our fifth great proposed expenditure is for an 
American Navy. If there had been no "Maine" 
there would have been no Spanish war, no war 
expenditure of one thousand million dollars, no 
Philippine problem making us an Eastern 



80 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Asiatic power when we have not yet solved a 
dozen simple elementary problems at home, 
such as living wages for sweat-shop workers, 
lack of employment, civic honesty and cleanli- 
ness. 

Every battleship five years old is obsolescent 
Today's and next year's development of flying 
machines may make every naval vessel as 
doomed as was chain and mail armor after the 
invention of gunpowder, as was the sailing cor- 
vette after the development of the steamship. 
Great Britain needs a navy and has kept up to 
date, has moreover coaling, repair and cable 
stations, indispensable to its effectiveness; but 
the value of great war navies to other nations 
— Germany, France, Russia, Italy, Argentina 
and the United States — has not yet been dem- 
onstrated ; and to two of them, it has proved an 
added calamity in a losing war. 

Nevertheless, being committed to a navy 
until such time as possible enemies are willing 
also to disarm, it is with great pride that the 
American can point to the efficiency of the 
modern American battleship, more efficient in 
action and operation than anything on a simi- 
lar scale thus far evolved by man. Through the 
improvement of the dependent sequence of dis- 



IDEALS 81 

tance, accuracy, rapidity, and weight of salvo, 
the modern American battleship is three-thou- 
sand times as efficient as its forerunner thir- 
teen years ago at the battle of Santiago. 

Every one of these five great works com- 
mits one of our American besetting industrial 
sins — over-equipment — due to our mistrust of 
spiritual forces, reliance on material measures. 
It is almost assumed that if a mistake is gigan- 
tic enough it will become praiseworthy. 

The sixth and seventh great American works 
are utilitarian, the subways in New York, and 
the elevator-served tall buildings everywhere. 
Even as to these, definite ideals have not been 
established and followed. Some of the tall 
buildings sacrifice utility to ornamentation, 
others are painfully ugly but admirably 
adapted, while a third class are both ornamen- 
tal and convenient. As to the subways, in view 
of the fact that they are an independent system 
connecting with no other road, it is a pity that 
they were not made with 6-foot gauge and 
12-foot wide double-deck coaches, that they were 
not built as double-deckers, thus giving 300 per 
cent greater seating capacity for the same 
length of platform and for a relatively small 
increase of initial expense. 



82 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

It is not either the right or the privilege of 
the Efficiency Engineer to set up ideals of mo- 
rality, goodness, or beauty, or to assume that 
his ideal of purpose is superior; but he has a 
right to expect that some definite and tangible 
ideal will be set up so that at the start its pos- 
sible incompatibility with one or more of the 
efficiency principles may be pointed out. The 
ideals underlying British railroad construction 
are very clear: no grades, no curves, no grade 
crossings, double tracks, great passenger ter- 
minals, and capitalization of all betterments. 
Although five of these ideals are not compatible 
with common sense and were not adopted at the 
start by either practical colonials or Americans, 
the Efficiency Engineer can accept an estimate 
of $375,000 a mile, the cost of British railroads, 
and aid in giving the best result possible for the 
money, since these ideals are not incompatible 
with any efficiency principle except common 
sense. 

There is one great American railroad genius, 
always an idealist, who has risen to the com- 
manding position in the railroad world because 
he had definite ideals. He states that a railroad 
company is to be managed to earn dividends, 
that expenses are by the train mile and receipts 



IDEALS 83 

are by the ton mile. In twenty years, on these 
three precepts, he has built up a dominant rail- 
road system. He has developed the country 
through which his road ran, and lowered rates, 
because this gave him more ton miles. He has 
reduced grades and curvatures and used heavy 
locomotives and long trains because this reduced 
the cost per train mile. He has reached out for 
Oriental traffic because this not only gave more 
ton miles, but equalized traffic, thus lessening 
ton-mile cost. To each one of the three ideals — 
dividends, low mile cost, large volume of traf- 
fic — each of the other eleven principles could 
be applied and in unusual measures have been 
applied by James J. Hill. 

Another great railroad executive, J. W. Ken- 
drick, regarded disagreements with labor as 
consuming time and energy, destructive to 
peace, loyalty, and harmony, and he therefore 
resolved to set up a high standard of discipline 
based on the Fair Deal made attractive by 
an Efficiency Reward. Not a breath of labor 
trouble has occurred in six years in the depart- 
ments to which these principles were applied, 
and the cost of each item of work has decreased, 
the standard of excellence has risen, the men 
have earned more money. 



84 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

It is, however, in industrial companies 
smaller than the great railroads that in a few 
cases high ideals have been adopted. 

The ideals of one company are that its cus- 
tomers shall be treated with absolute fairness, 
that its employees shall be of higher skill and 
be better paid than those of neighboring com- 
petitors, that they shall have permanence of 
employment. These ideals are an admirable 
foundation on which a very efficient organiza- 
tion has been built up, and while the managers 
have not consciously formulated and followed 
the eleven other efficiency principles, they are 
applying most of them. 

The ideal of another company, to which they 
make their own profits subsidiary, is that their 
employees shall be able to lead wholesome New 
England village lives, the workers working near 
their homes, the fathers with leisure to retain 
leadership in their own families. An ideal of 
this kind is also an admirable foundation on 
which to build a highly efficient organization 
for, in corporations as in individuals, what is 
the profit of gaining the whole world if the soul 
is lost? 

The president of an old and large plant near 
New York City stated with high-minded dig- 



IDEALS 85 

nity the ideals under which he and his partners 
managed their business, not realizing how few 
managers had had time or opportunity to for- 
mulate such ideals, much less carry them into 
practice. 

"We are not money-mad. We strive to be 
worthy sons of the worthy fathers who started 
this manufacturing business two generations 
ago. We wish to see our employees prosper- 
ous, well-paid, not overworked ; we wish to sur- 
pass the world in the excellence of our product." 

These are lofty, kindly, homely ideals and 
the Efficiency Engineer can frame this picture 
with all the other principles. 

As to definite ideals, we could with profit 
learn from by-gone ages, although substituting 
other inspirations. Over one of the Greek Tem- 
ples the words were carved, "Know Thyself," 
for which we could substitute, "Know the 
Spirit Rather than the Externals of Your Busi- 
ness." 

In the monasteries of a great religious order, 
everywhere was the inscription, "Remember 
that De^th Comes." For this we can substitute, 
"Remember that We Must Endure." One great 
manager impressed on his workmen that there 
were just two ways of permanently raising 



86 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

men's wages. To obtain more from the pur- 
chaser, or to lessen unit cost of product by elim- 
inating wastes. 

The vagueness, the uncertainty, the aimless- 
ness that characterizes employees is but an in- 
filtration of the vagueness, uncertainty, aim- 
lessness, that characterizes employers. There 
can be no legitimate conflict between rails and 
locomotive, between locomotive and its engineer 
and its firemen, no legitimate conflict between 
engineer and despatcher, no conflict between 
despatcher and time-table, although the time- 
table defines to a second the running time of a 
train going at extremest speed for a thousand 
miles or more. 

If every manager would formulate his own 
ideals, promulgate them throughout his plant, 
post them everywhere, inoculate every official 
and every employee with them, industrial or- 
ganizations could attain the same high degree 
of individual and aggregate excellence as a 
base-ball league. These ideals ought both spe- 
cifically and by implication to include much 
that rational labor unions strive for ; they ought 
as definitely to exclude ideals incompatible with 
efficiency even if labor unions mistakenly ad- 
vocate them. 



IDEALS 87 

For the manager endowed with common 
sense but two courses are open. To set up his 
own ideals and reject all efficiency principles 
that do not accord with them, or to accept the 
organization and principles of efficiency and 
to create correspondingly high ideals. 



IV 

THE SECOND PRINCIPLE 
COMMON SENSE 



The same care and toil that raise a dish of peas at 
Christmas would give bread to a whole family during 
six months. 



Chapter IV 

THE SECOND PRINCIPLE: COMMON 

SENSE. 

DARWIN points out that the maternal 
instinct makes a mother exaggerate 
the importance of her offspring, thus 
adding to its chances of survival. Each of us 
is quite sure he possesses all the common sense 
needed, and this is also an important instinct, 
since without it we would lack self-confidence, 
initiative, we would be deficient in the ability to 
do, to accomplish. Before the human being 
runs, he walks, before he walks he creeps, be- 
, fore he creeps he kicks, and the sprawls of the 
infant give us promise of the man. Let us 
therefore concede to each mother that her baby 
is the most valuable ever born, let us praise the 
excessive and ill-directed activity of the grow- 
ing boy. Let us also believe that no one is de- 
ficient either in quantity or quality of a form 
of common sense essential in past decades, but 

91 



92 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

now doubly dangerous, since it not only stimu- 
lates activities that are becoming in the highest 
degree deleterious, but it prevents us from pre- 
paring for the dawning era in which brains 
and hand-skill will take up the work begun 
with boldness and lusty kicks in our exuberant 
youth. 

It is because I have an abiding faith in the 
destiny both of my country and its inhabi- 
tants that I urge the application to its affairs 
of efficiency principles. That its people have in 
the past abundantly made use of a high order 
of near common sense justifies the belief that 
in the future it will surpass other nations in the 
use of supernal common sense. Let us there- 
fore grasp the difference between the two, and, 
having grasped it, let us wake up to some of 
the obvious present stumbling blocks in our na- 
tional, corporate and individual paths. 

The surf rider in Honolulu, who, standing on 
a board comes in on a curling breaker, is dar- 
ing, skilled, and intensely alive to the swirls at 
his feet. He is a good navigator of his kind; 
but there are men who guide great ships by not- 
ing the revolutions of the log, by marking the 
tick of the chronometer, correcting both by the 
movement of the planets and the stars. It is by 



COMMON SENSE 93 

these men, not by the surf riders, that the great 
business of the world is carried on, but the 
youthful surf riders of today are to become the 
guiding captains of the next decade. The com- 
mon sense of the American is the alert common 
sense of the surf rider. It is not yet, either 
nationally, corporately, or individually the com- 
mon sense of the far-knowing captain on the 
bridge, and what we need is not more common 
sense or more alertness, but a diametrical 
change in our point of veiw. The boy must 
forget his surf skill for a while and go to the 
mountain top and learn to know the stars so 
that he will hold them as friends whatever 
sea or desert he navigates or traverses. 

A single red copper cent seemed of more 
worth to the small and terrified soul* of a 
New England statesman than all our splendid 
country west of the Rocky Mountains, and be- 
cause he had near common sense, he was will- 



* "What do we want of the vast worthless area, this region of , 
savages and wild beasts, of deserts of shifting sands and whirlwinds 
of dust, cactus and prairie dogs? To what use could we ever hope 
to put these deserts, or these endless mountain ranges, impenetrable 
and covered to their bases with eternal snow? What can we ever 
hope to do with the western coast of three thousand miles, rock- 
bound, cheerless and uninviting, with not a harbor in it? What use 
have we for such a country? Mr. President, I will never vote one 
cent from the public treasury to place the Pacific Coast one inch 
nearer Boston than it is today." (Part of Daniel Webster's speech 
in Congress in 1844 against an appropriation of $50,000 to estab- 
lish mail communication with the Pacific Coast.) 



94 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ing to sacrifice anything to New England fish- 
ing interests; because he was destitute of su- 
pernal common sense, he lost to us the empire 
lying west of the Rockies north of 49 degrees 
up to 54 degrees 40 minutes, and, no thanks to 
him, we did not also lose Oregon and Wash- 
ington. 

Happily there were others, earlier and later, 
Spanish captains, French gentlemen and 
French priests, American pathfinders, who in 
duty, necessity and joy used ice floes as ships, 
rode the river currents as steeds, wielded the 
forest fire as an axe, dynamite and mountain 
torrent as a shovel, until we have got into the 
habit of trusting to gifts, not trusting to our- 
selves, of deputizing the fight from our own 
hands and muscles to vast steam and machine 
equipment. And while we appropriate these 
titanic helps, gifts, and implements, we child- 
ishly squander our national resources in ex- 
change for perishable luxuries supplied us by 
older and wiser men, corporations, and nations, 
who, not having gifts and prodigal equipment, 
still use their brains and hands — men who 
trade us sunshine, water, and air for our mined 
wealth, for our soil's fertility. 

At the present market price of nitrogen, 



COMMON SENSE 95 

phosphorus, and potash, every pound of cot- 
ton that leaves our shores carries with it about 
$0.03 of soil value, every bushel of corn or 
wheat carries away about $0.20 of soil fertil- 
ity. The nominal profit, about $0.03 a pound 
on cotton, about $0.20 a bushel on grain, is no 
greater than the market price of what is taken 
from soil value, and our agriculturist is devot- 
ing his great activity, his strenuous life of long 
hours, to the spending of his capital. The net 
income is nil. 

In the industrial and financial world our 
four greatest living Americans, all men of ex- 
traordinary genius and ability, are: Andrew 
Carnegie who built up his gigantic fortune by 
converting into iron and steel, and marketing 
them, the national resources in iron ore and 
coal; James J. Hill, who has capitalized his 
ablity to stimulate the exhaustion of the north- 
west wheat fields and the Pacific Coast forests ; 
J. Pierpont Morgan, who has marvelously 
stimulated and financed most of the great cor- 
porations existing for the destruction of in- 
herited resources; John D. Rockefeller, who 
has carried good and cheap light into the 
hovels of China, of Africa, but who has poured 
out of America by barrel, by case, and by tank 



96 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

steamer, our lakes of petroleum that it took 
millions of years of sunlight and earth's in- 
ternal heat and chemistry to accumulate. 

We are nearly all of us engaged in similar 
work, and as has been said of babies, if our 
ability to exhaust and destroy were commen- 
surate with our proclivities, the United States 
would before now have become an emptied 
shell. 

The civilized European and Asiatic national 
policies are wholly different. They regard us 
much as the thrifty purveyors of amusement 
and debauchery regard the recent notorious 
paranoiac who squandered his inherited patri- 
mony abroad, doing nothing of value with either 
hand or brain, sweeping all the glassware from 
a bar in a spirit of wanton destruction, oozing 
gold to those wiser and more cunning, more 
active in brain and body than himself, until 
broken in fortune, mind, and body, he ends 
his days in-an asylum for the criminally insane. 
What a contrast between this man and the 
great European artists, Sarah Bernhardt, Pad- 
erewski, Caruso, and Genee, who, inheriting no 
fortune and with no equipment, depleting no 
national resources, using only brain and muscle, 
exchange their fleeting efforts for half a mil- 



COMMON SENSE 97 

lion American dollars apiece, which they take 
back to their native countries, whence it flows 
again to us in exchange for our irreplaceable 
products. 

Does the American paranoiac differ much 
from the American State of Nevada which a 
generation ago, in its golden youth, took $300,- 
000,000 in gold and silver from the ground, ex- 
ported it all for transitory equivalents, and then 
lapsed into a sparsely settled desert waste? 

Switzerland was to Europe what the western 
deserts were to North America, a region desti- 
tute of national resources, but for centuries the 
canny Swiss marketed the fighting skill of their 
sons, who hired out in companies as guards 
for kings like Louis the XVI of France, or as 
gateway guards for private palaces, until in 
French the word (t Suisse" has become to mean 
"front-door custodian." 

When the French revolution curtailed the op- 
portunities for defending kings and palaces, the 
Swiss started in to market their wild scenery, 
to this end building good roads and good hotels, 
making visitors from all over the world come 
to their country. Up to this time the taste of 
the educated had been for flat, formal, conven- 
tional and tidy landscapes, mountains being 



98 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

held in horror. The Swiss also began to market 
little blocks of lumber for their weight in silver 
(after they had carved them by hand and brain 
skill). They imported raw materials from $20 
a ton up, and they exported them again as 
watches worth from $32,000 to $16,000,000 a 
ton, the difference between import value and 
export value being Swiss brains and handicraft. 
A very high order of supernal common sense 
animates the Swiss. 

No wonder that the former Senators from 
Nevada, Stewart and Jones, with their lives in- 
tertwined into a stupendous example of collec- 
tive prodigality, experiencing in their own for- 
tunes and activities its effects, studied more 
deeply the inter-relation of man, national re- 
sources and money than all the professors and 
statesmen of the eastern' seaboard ; Nevada can 
teach us more than one lesson. It was in Ne- 
vada that two pugilists, one black, the other 
white, by one hour's strenuous brain and body 
work before a moving-picture camera, produced 
pictures with a net export value of $100,000. 
We can achieve in America when we wake up, 
and if two of our citizens, Johnson and Jeffries, 
can manufacture in one hour's time export 
value worth $100,000, yet not deplete our nat- 



COMMON SENSE 99 

ural resources, could not some of our citizens of 
higher moral, mental, and financial equipment 
use a higher order of common sense and develop 
for export other products of American hands 
and brains? The depletion of Nevada was a 
very high order of near common sense. The 
production of exportable films of a prize fight 
is a very low order of supernal common sense. 

There is another Johnson, Eldridge Reeves 
Johnson, one of the few exceptions in our mil- 
lions, who, by means of a few cents worth of 
materials supplemented by American brain and 
hand skill is capturing the great singing voices, 
the instrumental bands, the speech of great ac- 
tors, and exporting disks at $5 each to the ag- 
gregate amount of millions. All honor to this 
exceptional man. 

The table on page 101, from figures in the 
June, 1910, report of the United States Bureau 
of Statistics, shows that one-half our imports 
consist either of articles of luxury, as silks, 
wines, diamonds, or of products that do not 
deplete natural resources, as rubber, sugar, 
chemicals, or manufactures of which the value 
is mainly due to highly skilled labor and 
delicate machinery, as cotton and linen lace, 
works of art and skill; and that our exports 



100 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

consist largely of prime raw materials, which 
deplete our natural resources, which are pro- 
duced in vast quantities by unskilled labor 
aided by big and rough machines. 

Even as to an item like tobacco, in which im- 
ports and exports are not far apart in value, 
imports were 46,838,330 pounds and exports 
357,196,074 pounds, more than seven times as 
much in quantity. 

The exported materials, oils, metals, coals, 
can never be replaced ; the exported lumber can- 
not be regrown in centuries. The imported silk, 
sugar, coffee, wool, tobacco and wines consist of 
brain skill, hand skill, sunlight, air and water; 
the chemicals are often high priced by-products 
which we waste ; china, glass and laces are im- 
mensely valuable compared to the materials 
which make them, are therefore brain and hand 
products. Of the ten leading imported products, 
diamonds alone are lasting; all the others are 
fleeting luxuries, eaten up, drunk up, smoked 
up, worn out before the year rolls around. 

Germany's governmental policy is to encour- 
age the exports of brain, labor, sunshine, air 
and water ; there is nothing in sugar, in alcohol, 
but carbon, gathered from the air, but hydro- 
gen and oxygen gathered from the rain water, 



COMMON SENSE 101 

transformed by the nun into beet plants, grown 
in fields, tilled and weeded by hand, the beet 
pulp being transfoimed by other hands and 

Imports. 
Total imports $1,557,819,988 

India rubber, unmanufactured $106,861,496 

Sugar 106,349,005 

Silk 100,003,636 

Coffee, tea, cocoa 94,242,360 

Chemicals drugs, dyes. 90,964,241 

Manufactured cotton 66,473,143 

Manufactured fibers, linen, hemp, etc 57,624,245 

Diamonds and stones 47,799,801 

Tobacco, unmanufactured 27,751,279 

Spirits and wines 23,384,133 

Works of art 21,088,720 

Earthenware, china and glass 17,574,890 

Bonnets and hats 7,950,530 

Toys 6,585,781 

49.7 per cent, of total imports. $774,653,260 

Exports. 
Total exports $1,710,083,998 

Raw cotton $450,447,243 

Animals, meats, leather, furs, etc., not in- 
cluding fish 199,996,328 

Breadstuffs 133,191,330 

Mineral oils and paraffin 106,976,571 

Copper 88,004,397 

Rosin, etc., vegetable oils and oil cake. . . . 54,412,275 

Logs and lumber 51,852,136 

Coal and coke 43,589,918 

Tobacco, unmanufactured 38,115,386 

Fertilizers 8,700,640 

68.7 per cent, of total exports $1,175,286,224 



102 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

skilled knowledge into sugar and alcohol. Den- 
mark and Holland export butter which takes 
nothing from the soil. The French import 
Asiatic silk, weave it at Lyons, and export the 
finished product. They export wine, by analysis 
87 per cent water, 10 per cent alcohol and 0.04 
per cent aroma and bouquet. Water and alcohol 
take nothing from the soil, but the aroma makes 
the wine worth from ten dollars a pound down. 
In the peace negotiations between Bismarck 
and the French in 1871 it was not the money in- 
demnity, it was not the loss of territory, that 
prolonged negotiations. Bismarck bethought 
himself to demand 5,000 empty old champagne 
barrels, impregnated with the aroma, the bou- 
quet-producing ferment, and this the French 
refused. They had consented to pay $1,000,- 
000,000, they broken-heartedly gave up Alsace 
and Lorraine, but the bouquet of their priceless 
wines Bismarck should not have, and in the end 
they compromised on five barrels. The French 
were instinctively governed by supernal com- 
mon sense. 

America had great natural resources. The 
man who grabbed them first and fastest reaped 
the greatest reward. Tonnage, quantity, became 
a mania, men and equipment to produce ton- 



COMMON SENSE 103 

nage have been the supreme aim. The Ameri- 
can who killed the most buffalo for their hides, 
felled the largest tree cutting to lumber only 
the main stem, pastured the most cattle on free 
government range, scooped or trapped the most 
salmon by current-turned wheels or other traps, 
has been a gmm-national hero. Because these 
deeds were done by rifle, by steam saws, by cow- 
boy outfits, by trap devices, it has become in- 
stinctive with us to exalt "tonnage" or quantity, 
to exalt equipment and to underrate organiza- 
tion. The instinct is therefore almost invari- 
ably to over-equip and to under-organize, to 
work with masses and aggregate rather than 
with details and ideals. Give the American a 
ton of dynamite and a mountain of rock and he 
is happy. 

It takes neither much intelligence nor much 
labor to run a tunnel into the mountain, to ex- 
cavate a chamber, to fill it with explosives, to 
turn on an electric sparker and blow the ever- 
lasting hills into the air, afterwards washing 
away the debris with a hydraulic jet. It was 
wonderful to make hydraulic mining pay for 
gold contents worth less than $0.05 per cubic 
yard, about one ten-millionth part of the mate- 
rial, but there was another aspeet. The hill 



104 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

sides were denuded, the lower rivers clogged, 
so that the issue between the farmers and hy- 
draulic miners of California was a burning 
question for many years. Yet as we have seen, 
the farmer is worse than the miner. We can 
live without gold, but we shall starve on an ex- 
hausted soil. 

Everywhere and always there is tonnage 
mania, and with it over-equipment of plant, 
too many men and prodigality of material. 
More capital is invested than is necessary. It 
is the materal asset that appeals, not the 
greater value of organization and skill. Even a 
further step is taken and tonnage possibilities 
are converted into stock. I knew one captain of 
finance who capitalized the uncaught fish in the 
sea and persuaded Wall Street to underwrite 
the securities. 

In field, in forest, in railroad operation and 
in manufacturing shops there is the same spirit 
of tonnage mania, lavish equipment, under-or- 
ganization. It is good that the farmer trans- 
ferred the bulk of his manual work to animals 
and more recently to machines. It is not good 
that his farm machinery, which ought to last 
with care for 40 years, is used only 30 days 
each year, is worn out and discarded in 5 years, 



COMMON SENSE 105 

after a total average use of only 150 days. One- 
third of the cost of harvesting and threshing 
wheat is the depreciation of the farm ma- 
chinery. 

From our forests we produced, in 1850, 5,000 
million board feet, in 1909, 50,000 million board 
feet, a total of over 1,000 billion board feet, and 
a like amount has been wantonly or carelessly 
destroyed. 

Railroad officials of the highest rank and 
largest experience have testified to the loss of 
ties by decay, to the waste of fuel, to the enor- 
mous losses from inefficient purchase and use 
of material, to the lack of interest of employees, 
to the detentions of freight cars, thus indicat- 
ing inefficiencies of material, inefficencies of la- 
bor, and inefficiencies of equipment, but thus 
far they have not ascertained with exactitude 
the extent of these inefficiencies nor their cause. 

Because for several generations our big activ- 
ities have been built up on tonnage ideals, it 
will be exceedingly difficult and disquieting to 
their officials to change the destructive tenden- 
cies, and our whole industrial organization will 
have to undergo sooner or later the experience 
of a certain large shop. The company owning 
it also owned large ore mines, lake steamers, 



106 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

railroads, coal mines, river barges. The main 
business was originally to make iron and steel. 
To this end blast furnaces, converters, were 
built, and to keep them busy the contributory 
properties were secured. Each and every part 
from mine to mill finds itself operating on a 
tonnage basis. The easiest way to reduce costs 
is to increase tonnage, to put into operation 
larger and larger equipment. Purchasers want- 
ing thin sheets and small rods have complained 
to me of the great difficulty of having their or- 
ders filled. There is no tonnage in such orders ; 
they do not help the mine, the steamers, the 
railroads, the coke ovens, the furnaces, the roll- 
ing mills. To absorb the tonnage, manufactur- 
ing shops are started to convert shapes and 
rods into finished product, bridges or bolts, etc. 
One of these shops was selected for the appli- 
cation of efficiency principles. On time-study 
investigation the automatic machines were 
found to be delivering but 30 per cent of rated 
capacity, although the shop was on full time. 
By discovery of and elimination of the causes 
of stoppage, the output was increased to 67 per 
cent and it was then ascertained that working 
at 80 per cent of rated capacity the shop could 
turn out more product than required normally 



COMMON SENSE 107 

by the whole United States. The shop is now 
working less than half time and is producing 
more than it ever did before on full time. 

As was formerly the case in this shop, "the 
immediate'' has been mercilessly held up to 
every one connected with American work. A 
generation ago, all but a few of the railroad 
companies capitalized maintenance and de- 
clared dividends out of imaginary earnings. 
The immediate obscured the future. There has 
been an improvement at the top, but the minor 
officials still exercise all their best near common 
sense in realizing near ideals. 

A number of years ago there was a great 
freight blockade extending west from Buffalo. 
Every western superintendent was instructed 
to forward no more cars. A local superinten- 
dent at Buffalo had gathered from far and 
near all locomotives, unreliable cripples as well 
as good power. The blockade became worse, as 
the cripples hindered the good locomotives even 
as women and children would hinder a regi- 
ment of marching soldiers 1 A high official was 
imported who made quick work of the trouble 
by sending the cripples away from the field of 
battle. When it became apparent that the 
blockade was soon to be broken, word was sent 



V 



108 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

west that on a certain date cars could be for- 
warded. A smart superintendent of a western 
division industriously collected all his locomo- 
tives, arranged long trains of freight cars in his 
yards and on his sidings, and when the hour 
came he forwarded an avalanche of trains and 
and cars, clearing his own divisions, but hope- 
lessly clogging the next one. As part of his 
plan he disappeared from his office so that he 
could not be reached by higher authority and 
his nefarious myopic zeal be thwarted. He 
made a tonnage record, he trusted to his equip- 
ment, he showed near common sense. 

A railroad superintendent had occasion to 
send one of his locomotives to the central shops 
several hundred miles away for repairs. The 
locomotive was quite capable of hauling a two- 
thirds load, but this was not permitted and the 
locomotive was not even permitted to go under 
its own steam. It was put in a freight train and 
bumped over the road to its own detriment and 
that of the train and track. The superinten- 
dent was adding to his tonnage record. This 
tonnage mania is one of the curses of American 
practice. It had its value a generation ago 
when first erected consciously into an operating 
principle for blast-furnace output and freight 



COMMON SENSE 109 

movement by the great minds of Andrew Car- 
negie and James J. Hill, but it has wrought 
havoc when applied by lesser geniuses who 
forthwith, instead of thinking aud planning and 
organizing, clamor for more equipment. The 
epidemic of broken rails which discredited the 
Bessemer process and against which railroad 
executives combined in protest was brought 
about by the tonnage mania, by the use of piped 
ingots and few passes. The physical and 
psychical sledge-hammer blows of Mr. J. W. 
Kendrick demonstrated the rottenness of the 
rails. 

On one of the great transcontinental lines 
a gravity grade was eliminated at a cost of 
$5,000,000, entailing a fixed charge forever of 
$1,000 a day. The operating cost of the helper 
locomotives able to handle all the traffic up the 
grade did not exceed $100 a day. 

In the foundry of one of the large Pittsburg 
machine shops, the castings for a large engine 
are made. Eighty per cent of the weight and 
forty per cent of the work occurs in three or 
four pieces, the flywheel, the bed, the cylinder. 
On the next fifteen per cent of weight there is 
another forty per cent of work, and in the final 
five per cent of weight there is twenty per cent 



V 



110 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

of the work. The founder, aiming at tonnage, 
molds the big pieces and then clamors for more 
work, urging the starting of another engine. 
When the engine parts reach the erecting floor 
it proves almost impossible to secure the five 
per cent of missing small castings, involving 
per ton eight times as much work as the larger 
pieces. 

A structural shop orders the supplies from a 
rolling mill. The big beams are promptly 
shipped, because they add to tonnage. The 
angles and smaller pieces do not come for weeks 
or months. The superintendent of the struct- 
ural shop pleads for permission to begin work 
immediately on material not deliverable for 
three months. He also has a greedy eye on ton- 
nage. If permitted to do the work ahead of 
time he clamors for permission to ship it. He 
is always ahead on big work, always behind on 
small work. 

In a machine shop it is ascertained that a big 
machine, a flange furnace, a bull riveter, a 
wheel lathe, can do certain classes of work in 
shorter time. Very seldom is a careful study 
made of the yearly cost of operating and main- 
taining the desired machine, or of the quantity 
of work that can be diverted to it, or the dispo- 



COMMON SENSE 111 

sition that is to be made of the displaced ma- 
chines. The efficiency of the existing machines 
and men is never ascertained, because there are 
only a dozen shops in the United States in 
which any scientific standards of men and ma- 
chine efficiency exist. The old machines may 
be working at 60 per cent efficiency, with a 
standardized cost of $0.90 an hour for machine 
and man. New equipment costing $10,000 is 
ordered, with a yearly machine rate alone of 
$5,000. If the machine is used 2,500 hours, the 
hourly rate will be $2.00 an hour. The prob- 
ability is that it can be used only 1,250 hours 
in the year. This makes the actual hourly 
charge $4.00 an hour for work which had been 
taking twice as long at 60 per cent efficiency 
and at a cost of $0.90 an hour. At 100 per cent 
efficiency it would have taken only 20 per cent 
longer time than on the new machine, the rela- 
tive costs varying from $1.08 on the old ma- 
chines to $4.00 on the new. 

In a plant a new $8,000 machine was ordered 
by the office because it was believed that certain 
work was not being deliverd fast enough. It 
was found that the old machiiie was working 
less than three hours a day. Had the new ma- 
chine been bought it would have increased per- 



112 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

manently the operating costs of the company 
about $4,000 a year. 

In over-equipped plants (most plants are 
over-equipped) if there is an expensive ma- 
chine capable of working only a few weeks each 
year, the work ought not to be charged with 
the tremendous hourly rate required to carry 
the machine. A legitimate hourly rate is based 
on the assumption that the machine works full 
time and the idle hours should be charged to 
overhead expense. The aggregate of these 
wasteful overhead expenses is very great. It 
is common sense, the highest kind of progres- 
siveness, to install a machine that can cut down 
the time of work to one-half, and this kind of 
common sense is peculiarly American, but usu- 
ally the increased equipment is not yet needed, 
existing equipment is inefficiently used owing 
to under-organization, and the ill-considered 
additions are due to the national reluctance 
either to think or to tire muscles. 

The traffic manager of a great railroad ap- 
prehends a prospective 10 per cent increase in 
business several months ahead. He immediate- 
ly insists on additional equipment, 100 more 
locomotives and 4,000 more cars, and no one 
stops to ascertain whether existing equipment 



COMMON SENSE 113 

is working at more than 60 per cent efficiency. 
On the basis of past experience the increase is 
justified, but there are many instances in which 
equipment takes the place of business, as in the 
case of the boy who, starting a lemonade stand, 
does not feel himself equipped for business un- 
til he is provided with patent lemon squeezers, 
ice pulverizers, strainers, patent vibrating 
shakers, a $50 outfit, from which with great 
loss of time he produces semi-occasionally luke- 
warm, watery lemonade in dirty, sticky glasses. 
He has neither organization, ideals, nor com- 
mon sense, and so, in his humble way, he 
tumbles into the mistake of over-equipment, 
carrying out the national proclivity which pre- 
vents us from giving to great industrial prob- 
lems and questions as much time and analytical 
thought as a good chess player gives to his 
game. 

The American, from presidents of the United 
States or of great corporations down to cubs in 
office or shop, in spite of his natural mother- 
wit, finds himself struggling against quick- 
sands of tradition, whirlpools of immediate 
necessity, fogs of current practice, of near com- 
mon sense; and each is in the condition of the 
great condor, the most skilled of all flying birds, 



114 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

whose nest and starting ledge is in the face of 
high cliffs, but who, once on the ground, in a 
fifty-foot circle surrounded by a ten-foot fence 
is less able to rise than a barnyard chicken. 

The elimination of waste through the appli- 
cation of the efficiency principle of common 
sense is a more difficult task than the elimina- 
tion of waste from gold-mining operations by 
the use of better processes. Better extraction 
from ores, better exploitation of mine tailings, 
is easily attained by the use of better methods, 
which do not in any way clash with the train- 
ing ideals and conceptions of a progressive 
manager. 

Better methods and processes, however 
important, are a minor part of one single 
efficiency principle, the standardization of con- 
ditions ; but to apply all the principles, a man- 
ager must be born again, forgetting much that 
he thought of value, adopting, adapting, becom- 
ing adept in new lines of thought. At the start 
he finds himself enmeshed in an offensive, de- 
structive type of organization which he must 
use an unfamiliar common sense to modify and 
remake into a defensive, upbuilding type. Even 
if he is in a position of highest authority at the 
top, this is not easy as he must run counter to 



COMMON SENSE 115 

most of the ideals and life-long practices of an 
extended line of subordinates. If he finds him- 
self many steps below the top, he is indeed 
caught between the upper and nether mill stone, 
for those above him will treat his suggestions 
with impatience and skepticism, those below 
him will meet them with rebellion. Even if he 
succeeds in making his organization construc- 
tive, he must then use an unfamiliar Common 
sense to overcome in himself and others a long 
series of vague, discordant, at best opportunist 
and near ideals, substituting for these, not 
Utopian and unrealizable, but worldly-wise 
standards as high as the particular activity will 
commercially stand. 

If a manager has succeeded in modifying the 
organization, if he has succeeded in emphasizing 
the governing ideal so that all may understand 
it and work for it, he suddenly meets new diffi- 
culties probably from both customers and gov- 
ernment, who will make the occasion of his 
efforts to eliminate waste, to make better use 
of materials, of labor, of equipment, an excuse 
to demand a physical valuation of the material 
property as a basis on which to regulate freight 
rates or other charges, thus imposing a direct 
penalty on efficiency. 



116 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

It is impossible to lay down rules or to give 
specific directions as to how we shall convert 
prejudice and ignorance from without, near 
common sense within, into supernal common 
sense. 

Near common sense binds to the centre of a 
sphere. Supernal common sense may, like a 
star, survey the centre from any part of the 
vault of heaven, but the Twelve Principles of 
Efficiency, like the twelve signs of the zodiac, 
divide the heavens into twelve parts, thus giv- 
ing us twelve different directions of attack on 
inefficiency. 

To select an upbuilding constructive organ- 
ization, carefully to determine and adhere to 
ideals, constantly to survey every problem from 
a lofty instead of near point of view, to seek 
special knowledge and advice wherever they 
can be found, to maintain from top to bottom 
a noble discipline, to build on the rock of the 
golden rule, of the fair deal — these are the gen- 
eral problems which supernal common sense 
must immediately solve. It will perhaps prove 
more difficult to remedy the evils of over-equip- 
ment, the direct result of an elementary organ- 
ization accustomed to deal with great natural 
resources. 



V 

THE THIRD PRINCIPLE: COMPETENT 
COUNSEL 



An army must have its chief, its consulting aids, 
and its ranks; there must be cog-wheels as well as 
fly-wheels on every machine — each watch must have 
its main-spring — each government its supreme head. 
— Herbert Kaufmann. 

Persistence is the key to existence. Success in- 
var\.oly rewards the good fight. Knowing what to 
do or how to do it won't bring results. Action must 
drive ability. The nail is useless without the hammer. 
Courage is the complement of knowledge. — Herbert 
Kaufmann. 

By co-ordinating the two elementary ideals of man- 
agement — line, for permanence, authority, discipline; 
staff for development of high functional efficiency — 
"scientific management" restores, both to the job and 
the man, the identity — the individualism — which under 
ordinary management is lost by a policy of wholesale 
dealings and mass relations. — Charles Buxton Going. 

For all that seek discipline, hear me, ye great men, 
and all ye people. — Ecclesiasticus, 33. 

Oh, Neptune, thou canst save this my little bark, 
thou canst also engulf it and me. Nevertheless I shall 
steer it in thy storm with all the skill and strength 
the gods give me. — Prayer of Sicilian Greek Sailor. 



Chapter V 

THE THIRD PRINCIPLE: COMPETENT 
COUNSEL 

WHEN I was a boy, hobnobbing with 
British boys in various parts of Eu- 
rope, we relied on the manly art of 
self-defense, and I was expected to hold my 
own, by my two fists, backed up by my own 
courage. We loathed the savate dexterity of 
the French boy, the knife play of the Italian 
boy, the stone-wrapped-in-handkerchief sling 
of the German boy, for we considered such 
methods of defense and offense not according 
to the rules of the game. Nevertheless, a well- 
directed kick in the stomach from a French boy 
stopped very effectually my onward rush, and 
a slash from a pocket knife in the hands of an 
hysterical Italian boy, a leather belt loaded 
with a heavy brass buckle and murderously 
swung by a German boy, and other similar ex- 
periences taught me that bare fists, a stout 

119 



120 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

heart, and supreme contempt both of the per- 
sonality and ethics of an antagonist, were not 
sufficient to ensure even an honorable truce, 
much less victory; so I compromised by carry- 
ing a club cane which I had feloniously poached 
from a king's preserve, the irregularity of 
acquirement adding a sentimental value to the 
weapon. 

The early American manufacturer, generally 
of British blood, relied also on his own skill and 
knowledge. He was a practical man, and if a 
blacksmith, iron was iron and his own skill 
mastered the material; if a cabinet maker, 
wood was wood, not a veneered and inlaid con- 
coction, and his own skill mastered the ma- 
terials. These early leaders scorned the 
thought that they needed lawyer, purchasing 
agent, accountant, bouncer, private detective, 
doctor, chemist, or standard-practice engineer 
to help them run their shop and business. 
They believed in themselves as much as their 
contemporary in the presidential chair, Andrew 
Jackson, believed in himself. It has been only 
by slow and reluctant steps that great Amer- 
ican executives, heads of large corporations, 
have acquiesced in the innovation of specially 
qualified advisers. The change has come too 



COMPETENT COUNSEL 121 

fast, for there are men— Andrew Carnegie, 
James J. Hill, John D. Rockefeller — who have 
not only witnessed the change from the simple 
to the complex, but who have themselves been 
the mightiest human element in bringing about 
the change. Human industrial giants, who 
know as to the whole scope so much more about 
a business than any late arrival of a specialist, 
may well be excused for impatience and scepti- 
cism too often fully justified. 

A great president of a transcontinental rail- 
road was troubled by the flooding and washing 
away of his line on the slope of a foot hill. His 
engineers recommended relocation of the line 
at a cost of $800,000. The old eagle called for 
an Irish roadmaster and contractor; out they 
sped in the president's special, and for a whole 
day they tramped the situation. 

Following their conference and decisions, 
wing ditches were dug so as to divert the sur- 
face water around the hill and away from the 
road bed, the remedy costing $800 and proving 
a complete success. 

Another railroad president asked his engi- 
neering department to estimate the cost of 
grading a road in Texas. The estimate based 
on experience elsewhere was $800 a mile. The 



122 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

veteran president, a frontiersman from birth, 
called in a bright division superintendent and 
asked him if he could grade the extension for 
$450 a mile. Committed to the superintendent 
it actually cost $435. The water chemist to the 
same president strongly advocated a treating 
plant at a certain well. The president demurred 
because it was not at that point that water gave 
trouble. The chemist insisted that the water 
showed more grains of incrusting matter than 
at any other point. The president secured from 
another official a table showing the number of 
locomotives taking water at each of the tanks 
and found, as he expected, that very few wa- 
tered at the bad tank, very many at the good 
tank, whose water, containing only half the 
grains of solid matter, deposited ten times as 
much in the boilers because twenty times as 
much was used. 

Many of the older executives must today not 
only fulfil their own duties but in addition see 
that the inexperienced one-sided specialists do 
not cause more trouble than they cure. Never- 
theless, best practice in any line depends today 
on such a vast range of experience and knowl- 
edge that no one man, even in a very limited 
field, can master it all. No modern captain has 



COMPETENT COUNSEL 123 

a pilot's license for all harbors, and the wiser 
the captain, the larger the vessel he commands, 
the more willing and anxious he is to depend on 
local knowledge, even if the expert be an Arab, 
a Malay, a Kanaka, a Maori, or an Eskimo. 

The trouble with the water-purifying chem- 
ist was that he was too inexperienced, too lim- 
ited to pass on the whole subject. His opinion 
was valuable and sufficient as to the grains of 
solid in each water and at that he ought to have 
stopped. 

Competent counsel cannot come from one 
man. All around us are the laws of the uni- 
verse, here and there partly read and codified, 
but with many great and partially traversed 
regions. Counsel, direct or indirect, is wanted 
from each man who knows the most, so that 
we may not be floundering along on last week's, 
last month's, last year's, last decade's, or last 
century's knowledge, but use special knowledge, 
today the possession of the few, but destined 
to become world practice. 

High-speed steel was made known to the 
world by Messrs. Taylor and White in 1900. 
In 1903 one of the great western railroad shops 
was still without it; in 1910 another railroad 
shop in the Eastern States was discovered 



124 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

taking 18 hours to turn a pair of locomotive 
drivers, 3 hours being ample time on the type 
of lathe used. There are facts about high- 
speed steel, the dimple of durability, for in- 
stance, as yet known only to the few. 

In striving for industrial efficiency of opera- 
tion, we have made pleas for a different type 
of organization — the defensive, constructive 
organization instead of the offensive, destruc- 
tive organization; we have made a plea for 
definite high ideals instead of indefinite low 
ideals ; we have made a plea for supernal com- 
mon sense instead of near common sense; but 
no radical change in either point of view or 
practice is needed to extend the use of com- 
petent counsel from legal, accounting, purchas- 
ing, engineering, and other departments to an 
efficiency department. 

The. legal counselor of a great corporation is 
often a vice-president, the purchasing agent is 
often a vice-president, the chief engineer is 
often a vice-president, but the efficiency coun- 
selor is often a subordinate far down the line 
attached more by accident than design to some 
special department. 

The legal counselor extends his warning, 
helping, guiding hand to every other depart- 



COMPETENT COUNSEL 125 

ment. "You may not do this because it is il- 
legal; there is reasonable doubt as to another 
action; there is no doubt as to another plan." 
He does not pass on finances, records, engineer- 
ing, or efficiency questions. The financial coun- 
selor stands against irregular expenditures 
however much needed; the purchasing agent 
buys what is requisitioned in the best and most 
advantageous market. 

In the vanishing era of elementary achieve- 
ment, efficiency mattered not, but legality did; 
therefore long ago lawyers were consulted. 
Efficiency did not matter in the building of the 
pyramids, but engineering did; and from that 
time to this the engineer has been supreme in 
his own department. If it were not for the 
lawyer passing on charters, titles, agreements, 
there could be no railroad; if it were not for 
the financiers raising sums far beyond the 
power of even the richest individual there could 
be no railroad; if it were not for the engineer 
who designs the machinery that produces steel, 
who designs cars and rails, bridges, turntables, 
locomotives, there would be no railroad; if it 
were not for the traffic manager the rails would 
rust, the cars stand empty; were it not for the 
operating executives, there would be disasters. 



126 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

But the railroads and industrial plants al- 
most without exception are operating without 
efficiency counsel, efficiency problems of mo- 
mentous import being decided off-hand by in- 
tuition. Is it to be concluded that efficiency is 
of minor importance? 

At the present moment the business of the 
country is disturbed, shippers are arrayed 
against railroads and railroads against ship- 
pers ; railroad employees are being urged to act 
as a voting unit against any one who favors 
legislative interference with railroad operation. 
Because it is not competently advised from the 
efficiency standpoint, the Interstate Commerce 
Commission prescribes monstrously difficult, 
even impossible standards, brushing aside the 
accumulated wisdom and experience of the 
Master Car Builders' Association. Because 
they are not competently advised by efficiency 
counsel, shippers fight any rate increase, unable 
to point out wherein it is unreasonable, the fact 
being that many present rates are too low and 
others too high. Because they are not com- 
petently advised as to the economies in opera- 
tion and maintenance that would flow from 
efficiency, the railroads overlook the great gain 
within their grasp while they pursue the much 



COMPETENT COUNSEL 127 

smaller gain from greater rates they may not 
succeed in securing. 

The total annual salary and labor bill of the 
railroads of the United States in 1908 was 
$1,035,437,528. There is an impressive appear- 
ance of accuracy in these figures from which 
we are pained to miss the odd cents, but an 
examination of the sub-divisions shows that the 
average equivalent obtained is not quite 80 per 
cent, that a preventable waste occurred of over 
$200,000,000. 

In contemplating this enormous waste, the 
accuracy of expenditure statement loses its im- 
pressiveness, and side by side with these valu- 
able and accurate figures of the expert accoun- 
tant, we would like to see other figures from 
the efficiency counselor — other figures of far 
greater practical import. 

The other annual bills for operating expenses 
were, in 1908, $653,780,115, of which about 
$500,000,000 was for material. Is the efficiency 
of material used more than 60 per cent? Wher- 
ever it has been carefully and scientifically 
checked, in railroad operation, efficiency has 
scarcely reached 40 per cent. 

The cost of all railroads and equipment is 
reported for 1909 at $14,514,822,308. Interest 



128 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

at 6 per cent and average depreciation of 4 per 
cent (which is low) gives an hourly charge of 
$165,694 for these two items. An increased use 
of 4 per cent would amount to a gain of this 
amount each day, or over $50,000,000 a year. 
As the net earnings of the railroads in 1909, 
including sinking funds, w r ere only $1,078,132,- 
735, the railroads were about $400,000,000 
short of earning 6 per cent plus depreciation, 
but sympathy is not as great as it would be if 
it were not so evident that annual wastes, a 
very large part of them preventable, aggregate 
a sum larger than net earnings. 

What the railroads have not yet realized is 
that natural expenses are progressing geo- 
metrically and revenues are only increasing 
arithmetically. For a time heavier locomotives, 
larger -cars, lessened grades, longer trains, coun- 
teracted the geometrical danger, and it is doubt- 
ful whether higher efficiency will provide all 
the remedy needed, whether competent counsel 
of the highest order will not become imperative. 
The primary question, however, is not whether 
inefficiency costs the railroads $100,000,000 or 
$1,000,000,000 a year; but the question is why 
either loss should occur, and whether it is not 
sufficient to warrant competent counsel. 



COMPETENT COUNSEL 129 

The legal counselor does not, cannot know all 
the laws and proper legal formalities in every 
State, and he therefore employs junior and 
often senior counsel. Similarly a counselor as 
to efficiency would not pretend to be an expert 
as to all efficiency, but it would be his duty to 
be in touch both as to men and scientific reports 
with all that was latest and best and make it 
all available for his employer whether indi- 
vidual or corporation. 

If the corporation were large it would be the 
duty of the efficiency counselor to install and 
develop an efficiency organization, extending 
from top to bottom even as the accounting de- 
partment extends from top to bottom. Each 
minor official would have his own staff of effi- 
ciency experts working directly for him, but 
also even as the timekeeper to a superintendent 
is subject to the comptroller, so also would each 
efficiency expert be subject to the direction of 
the efficiency officer above him. 

The chief efficiency counselor would initially 
advise as to type of organization; he would 
ascertain what the ideals were and strive for 
their realization; he would represent supernal 
common sense ; but it is chiefly as to the stand- 
ardizing of the other operative principles that 



k 



130 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

his organizing ability would be applied. In 
most operating plants both discipline and fair 
deal are defective, records are neither reliable, 
immediate nor adequate, despatching is so ele- 
mentary as scarcely to be beyond the stage of 
putting into the shop an order for work, there 
are few, if any, scientifically made work 
schedules, there are no standard-practice in- 
structions, no standardized conditions, no 
standardized operations, and efficiency rewards 
are defective. 

Competent counsel must permeate every effi- 
cient organization, and if competent counsel 
cannot be carried into operation, it is because 
the organization is defective, because some staff 
is lacking, and the staff that usually still awaits 
creation is the efficiency staff. 

In coal mining in the United States the ques- 
tion is not whether 5 per cent or 3 per cent of 
the miners are killed each year, it is not the 
question whether we kill more or less than Eng- 
land kills, but the question is why a smaller 
per cent obtains in the more dangerous and 
difficult Belgian mines. 

A cholera epidemic raged lately in Europe. 
It was particularly bad in Russia, and it made 
headway in Italy. Several times in the last few 



COMPETENT COUNSEL 131 

years Germany has been infected, but each time 
competent counsel has prescribed procedure 
which has stamped out the disease, even as 
measures advised and enforced by competent 
counsel have stamped out yellow fever on the 
Isthmus of Panama. 

In chemistry more advance has been made in 
ten years than in all the previous time ; metal- 
lurgy, fifteen years ago was in its infancy. A 
generation ago a hospital was a charnel house 
and a doctor a peripatetic disseminator of con- 
tagion and infection. A generation ago sailing 
vessels were the rule and ocean steamers the 
exception, and farming had advanced only one 
step beyond the Egyptian or Assyrian methods. 
As this gigantic betterment has come because 
there was competent counsel, so competent 
counsel well deserves to be one of the Twelve 
Principles of Efficiency, and nowhere else is 
competent counsel more needed than in the ap- 
plication of the eleven other principles. 



VI 

THE FOURTH PRINCIPLE: DISCIPLINE 



The universe wants new ways of doing things, and 
the new things become old over night. — Herbert 
Kallmann. 

Thinking and doing aren't the same. Good ideas 
are only seeds. They must be planted and tilled be- 
fore they can produce. — Herbert Kaufmann. 

My son, do thou nothing without counsel, and thou 
shalt not repent when thou hast done. — Ecclesiasticus, 
32. 

Every purpose is established by counsel. — Proverbs, 
20, 18. 

Without counsel purposes are disappointed; but in 
the multitude of counsellors they are established. — 
Proverbs, 15, 22. 



Chapter VI 
THE FOURTH PRINCIPLE: DISCIPLINE 



Undisciplined — that is the word. It is the word for 
all the progress of the Victorian time, a scrambling, 
ill-mannered, undignified, unintelligent development of 
material resources. Want of discipline! The reek and 
scandal of the stockyards is really only a gigantic form 
of that same quality of American life that in a minor 
aspect makes the sidewalk filthy. Each man is for 
himself, each enterprise; there is no order, no pro- 
vision, no common and universal plan. 

Men are makers — American men, I think more than 
most men. One sees the light of a new epoch, the com- 
ing of new conceptions, of foresight, of large collective 
plans and discipline to achieve them. 

H. G. Wells: The Future of America, Chapter 4, 
Section 4. 



A LEXANDER DUMAS in that most famous 
/A of his novels, makes Monte Cristo the 
hero of one episode of marvelous im- 
probability. 

In Italy Monte Cristo had accepted an invita- 
tion to breakfast in Paris three months later 
and had agreed to appear on the minute. On 
the date appointed the other guests were assem- 
bled, very skeptical as to the coming of the 

135 



136 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

mysterious Count of whom no word had been 
heard since the invitation. The guests are im- 
patient — the host begs for five minutes leeway 
— the clock begins to strike — expectation rapid- 
ly sinks toward absolute zero when suddenly, 
immaculately dressed, Monte Cristo appears 
saying "Punctuality is the politeness of kings, 
but it cannot always be that of travelers and 
fifteen hundred miles are not easily covered. 
Excuse the two or three seconds I am late." 

It was beyond even Dumas' imagination to 
state that Monte Cristo started on his long trip 
also on time and made each stage of the jour- 
ney day by day, hour by hour, on time. Under 
the dependent sequence of personal arbitrari- 
ness and unstandardized road and horse condi- 
tions, it was indeed marvelous that he should 
arrive within a week of the time set, much less 
within a day, an hour, or a minute. 

Now hundreds sweep over the nearly thous- 
and-mile stretch between Chicago and New 
York on Monte Cristo's fraction of a minute 
precision. They start on the minute, they pass 
each station on the minute, they arrive on the 
minute; if there are delays, the passengers 
grumble mightily and the railroads pay rebates. 
The institution built up on time schedules has 



DISCIPLINE 137 

become mightier than the man and the man 
is immensely benefited by the discipline of the 
institution. 

Thirty years ago along the great inland 
rivers of the United States, the Ohio, the Mis- 
sissippi, the Missouri, the greatest difference 
was apparent between the river towns and the 
railroad towns. In the river towns steamboat 
passengers were quite content to wait several 
days, idling on the levee, whittling or swapping 
yarns or doing the dolce far niente on the hotel 
piazzas. When far up or down the river the 
deep bellow of the boat's whistle was heard, 
day or night, the sleepy town awakened into 
prodigious and spasmodic activity until the boat 
had come and gone ; then it went to sleep again. 
Clocks were not needed and all business was 
conducted on the same easy lines. Notes were 
paid, not when they were due, but when the 
crops were marketed. An Eskimo who figures 
years as so many snows, months as so many 
moons, and days as so many sleeps, would have 
found the business methods of the steamboat 
town wholly normal — steamboat coming down 
the river, great excitement; whale seen in the 
offing, great excitement — what was the differ- 
ence? In the railroad towns there was a very 



138 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

different spirit. People had clocks in their 
houses and watches in their pockets ; they went 
to the railroad station on railroad schedule 
time ; the coming and going of the daily trains 
became definite, regulating and educational 
events even to those who never traveled; they 
fell into the habit of keeping other appoint- 
ments; they were beginning to learn that the 
institution was greater than the individual. 

The near discipline of the rich man who 
makes his servants await his convenience in 
spite of a definite program arranged by him- 
self, the near discipline of some railroad mag- 
nates who more or less disarrange the train 
despatching on a whole system by their lack of 
observance of their own special train schedule, 
the near-discipline that would bend the sublime 
order of the universe to individual dilatoriness 
as in the story of Joshua's command to the sun 
to stand still, is not what is meant by "Disci- 
pline" as an efficiency principle. 

There is the discipline of life which leads us, 
almost compels us, to follow the teaching that 
comes to us from intimate contact with the ex- 
isting order. "The wicked shall not live half 
their days." It is easier to learn to fly than to 
make a landing. In a narrower sense we speak 



DISCIPLINE 139 

of the discipline of St. Francis, of St. Dominic, 
of Ignatius Loyola, meaning not punishment 
but a definite, regulated life, conduct, and ob- 
servances. In the narrowest sense we use the 
word to denote the act of punishment inflicted 
on a bad boy with the object of encouraging 
observance of prescribed conduct or rules. 

The word discipline thus has three — if not 
more — meanings. 

Adam began to experience the discipline of 
life when Eve became his daily companion; 
discipline and the greater life began in earnest 
for both of them when they found themselves 
outside the gates, with Cain, Abel and Seth 
frisking around, for there is no such categorical 
imperative as the sharp outcry of a very young 
baby. Adam and Eve, owing to lack of experi- 
ence and overvaluation, spoiled Cain; so being 
undisciplined, his exaggerated personality could 
not brook the preference shown Abel and he 
murdered him. 

Discipline as an efficiency principle includes 
all meanings, from lessons of life to man-inflict- 
ed punishment. The greatest regulator of con- 
duct is the spirit of the organization. 

I did not like being the only man in a dress 
suit at an informal business men's dinner in 



140 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Boston, nor did I like being the only man in 
flannel shirt and mucklucks at a Nome ball. 
The spirit of a place is intangible, but counts 
far more for either evil or good than all rules 
and punishments combined. So powerful is 
this spirit that it has been cynically said most 
men would have fewer conscience pricks over 
an undetected crime than over a ridiculed sole- 
cism. 

Is it not incredibly short sighted to throw 
to the winds such mighty helps to discipline as 
the spirit of the plant, the general scheme of 
conduct, and to place reliance in the undisci- 
plined acts of discipline of individuals clothed 
with a little brief authority? 

Nature is a relentless disciplinarian. 

Because the success of the whole plant de- 
pends not on its wealth, or its men, or its prod- 
uct, but on its spirit and rule, penalties for per- 
sistent infraction should be relentlessly severe. 
A whole race is exterminated in Africa because 
through ignorance it braves the bites of the 
tse-tse fly. If we fall asleep in charcoal fumes 
we do not awake, if we touch hot iron we are 
burned, if we put our heads under water for 
five minutes we drown, if we touch through 
mistake a live high-voltage wire, the penalty 



DISCIPLINE 141 

may be instant death. There are no rules and 
regulations about these punishments, they need 
no rules and regulations. 

The old story runs that Eve and Adam were 
banished from Paradise for eating a forbidden 
apple and that all their descendants not only 
cannot get back except by very special favor, 
but will have to spend all eternity in hell. 
Cain's punishment was also exclusion; he be- 
came a fugitive and a vagabond, he was not to 
be rewarded for his work and he bitterly com- 
plained that his punishment was greater than 
he could bear. One; Cook, wrote a cheerful 
book about scaling Mount Bulshaio and later 
sent some thrilling messages about the North 
Pole. Not because Peary accused him, which 
most people resented, but because his own 
stories and acts proved him a liar, he had to 
flee, like Cain, into obscurity and oblivion al- 
though no man pursued. 

Enforced resignation is one of the severest 
penalties in the army and navy ; on a great rail- 
road in the middle west employees were rarely 
discharged; they worked themselves up or 
down by an automatic system of merit and de- 
merit marks. In another great American busi- 
ness, a large specialty store, the making and 



142 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

enforcement of rules is turned over to a com- 
mittee of the employees. It is a universal ex- 
perience that no judge is as severe and unre- 
lenting as the more righteous contemporary 
with the same temptations and opportunities. 
It is not the child, the man, or the older woman 
who condemns Magdalen. It is not the child 
who pities the playmate killed by carelessness, 
it is not the successful old man who pities the 
gray-bearded derelict who has made a general 
shipwreck of life. 

If the spirit of the plant does not drive an 
undesirable associate away, if standard opera- 
tion and standard practice, both of which affect 
conduct, if reliable, immediate and adequate 
records, if absence of efficiency reward do not 
automatically, effectually and peaceably elimi- 
nate the undesirable, it is time for the strong 
hand to descend. There are certain all-night 
restaurants in the tenderloin district of New 
York frequented by roysterers of both sexes 
after the more reputable places are closed. A 
good-natured tolerance prevails for even un- 
usual hilarity and noise, but just let any mis- 
guided guests try to start something, they sud- 
denly find themselves seized and deposited out- 
side on the car tracks with locked doors be- 



DISCIPLINE . 143 

tween themselves and joy. The disciplinary 
hand is resistless, immediate and strong. 

Under the best management there are scarce- I 
ly any rules and there are fewer punishments. 
There are standard-practice instructions so that 
every one may know what his part in the 
game is, there is definite responsibility, there 
are reliable, immediate and adequate records 
of everything of importance, there are stand- 
ardized conditions and standardized operations 
and there are efficiency rewards. 

There can be organization without discipline, 
as in all plant life; there can be discipline 
without organization, as in most animal life. 
Because man has supernal ideals; because, if 
organization is weakened, the progress of cen- 
turies can be lost in a year, in a minute, as 
during an earthquake — the devil indeed catch- 
ing the hindmost ; because our unstable human 
organizations, even the integrity of the family, 
depend on discipline, it becomes a fundamental 
efficiency principle which continuously, vigor- 
ously, never falteringly must enforce a series 
of standards of high individual or combined 
conduct. 

"He that ruleth his spirit is better than he 
who taketh a city." Discipline is not arbitrary 



K 



144 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

rules with punishment for short-comings, real 
or imaginary. 

The tremendous simplicity of the scheme of 
the universe is the real marvel of it all. Uni- 
versal attraction and universal repulsion — all 
elements have approximately the same atomic 
heat — but three principles underlie all life — 
self-preservation, race-perpetuation and the 
proprietary instinct. From a few elementary 
laws, other universal laws spring; and any 
near-law that cannot trace its parentage 
straight back to one of the supernal laws, if 
indeed there is ultimately more than* one su- 
pernal, is probably not even a legitimate near- 
law. 

Fine manifestations of disciplined perform- 
ance are the four eighteen-hour trains each day 
between New York and Chicago. So unobtru- 
sive is the perfect discipline that the passenger 
sees no rules or orders given, he does not see 
the far-ahead light or semaphore signals that 
govern progress, he sees still less the tele- 
graphic messages flashed by the despatchers to 
the signal towers, he knows little of the dupli- 
cate orders issued to conductor and engineer. 
The discipline is that of the velvet paw armed 
with the sharpest claws, infraction possibly 



DISCIPLINE 145 

resulting in destruction of the whole train, a 
trans-human punishment; infraction, even if 
there is no immediate disaster, resulting in 
reprimand or dismissal. 

Many years ago I became interested in a 
socialistic experiment on the shores of the Pa- 
cific. In that favored region of mild climate, 
tall timber, waters teeming with fish, woods 
alive with game, the earth covered with fertile 
soil, a man and woman would be justified in 
starting married life with a fish net, an axe 
and a spade, a cook pot and a jack knife. They 
might catch enough fish in a single day to last 
a whole year, and if it was not the season for 
fish, they could dig clams with the spade, pick 
wild berries in abundance, and easily split 
cedar logs, for canoe or hut. The skins of wild 
rabbits furnish blankets and clothes. 

It was in this part of the country that a band 
of earnest men and women, some militant, some 
supine, some altruistic, some selfish, but all 
dreamers, resolved to start a socialistic colony, 
"to ease the strong of their burden, to help the 
weak in their needs." Members were either to 
contribute or to work. Contributing members 
were to pay $2.50 a month to be spent in the 
purchase of land, implements, machinery, and 



146 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

all else that the colony could not make for it- 
self. Working members were to clear the 
ground, erect buildings, build boats, sawmills. 
Capital exacting no interest, labor never strik- 
ing, were to combine in making the wilderness 
a paradise. 

The contributing members, in case of disas- 
ter overtaking them in the outer world of com- 
petition, were to have the right to move at once 
to the colony where they and their children 
would find a ready-made home, an asylum from 
want and poverty, becoming working members 
as strength and ability permitted. Ranks of 
workers were to be recruited, partly from con- 
tributing members, partly by admission. The 
plan seemed feasible, especially as a large tract 
of valuable meadow and forest land was given 
by one of the enthusiastic founders, a theoso- 
phist who lived altruism. 

I spent some time at this colony as a visitor. 
I met noble jnen and women, but I also met 
drones who lolled in bed while others worked; 
drones who expected to be waited on, and as I 
watched I came to admire the spirit of the bee- 
hive which ruthlessly cuts off the wings of 
useless drones and pushes them outside the hive 
to perish. 



DISCIPLINE 147 

I also noted that capital and labor in com- 
bination are not enough, that the essential to 
direct both is after all the organizer, the dis- 
ciplinarian; and I perceived that it was the 
discipline of St. Francis, the discipline of St. 
Dominic, the discipline of Ignatius Loyola, that 
made these great monastic and religious orders 
enduring and successful century after century, 
even as it was the discipline of the Old Man 
of the Mountain and his successors in spite of 
their atrocious practices and beliefs that main- 
tained for two hundred years the power of the 
sect of the Hashishim or Assassins. 

So great is inefficiency of all kinds every- 
where that the application of even this one 
principle of discipline has produced great re- 
sults through military or church organizations. 
Just as soon as a community bends to disci- 
pline, whether its members are followers of 
Romulus, of Leonidas, empires are either 
founded or shattered, and just a little disci- 
pline as to dress and work has made such 
American communities as the Shakers, Econo- 
mies, Mennonites, wealthy. In the army, as 
in the church, the first vow is obedience ; and in 
Schiller's ballad the slaying of the dragon did 
not save St. George from condemnation and 



148 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

punishment for his disobedience. The large 
office buildings in New York are peculiarly de- 
pendent on discipline. They are miniature 
cities in which all municipal activities, lighting, 
heating, cleaning, transportation, are constant- 
ly going on. As long as the tenants are present 
from 8 a. m. to 5 p. m. high order is main- 
tained, but shortly after 5 o'clock discipline 
relaxes, attendants raise their voices, begin to 
smoke cigarettes, to romp, and the conviction 
grows that if these modern palaces were turned 
over as a possession to their own trained at- 
tendants, in an incredibly few weeks they would 
be marred and scarred, dirty and disorderly, 
physically and morally. 

Family life can exist in the Gypsy caravan 
or in the Arab tent or Indian tepee, in the 
wolves' den or in the bird's nest, but we owe 
the continuance of civilization to the citizen 
efficiency and standard-practice engineers, men 
and women, heads of great institutions, govern- 
ments, corporations and enterprises, who de- 
sign and erect the firm skeleton of discipline 
that maintains in place the units of individual- 
ism, lest the whole aggregation tumble to ruin 
at the first shock in earth or air. 

In marked contrast with the vagueness and 



DISCIPLINE 149 

looseness of obligation and control in the social 
colony that failed, is the high organization and 
discipline of modern baseball teams in which 
individual effort and reward has been happily 
combined with team work and collective re- 
ward. In baseball each man disciplines him- 
self; to this is added the discipline of the team, 
and on top comes the discipline of the league. 
Without high individual standards, without 
team codes enthusiastically lived up to, without 
severe penalties to enforce obedience to the um- 
pire and peace between the teams, the modern 
game would be impossible. It is the spirit of 
discipline, not its letter, that counts, and the 
spirit is reciprocal from bottom to top, from 
top to bottom and sideways to all associates ; it 
is reciprocal between the individual and the 
flag under which he is industriously enlisted. 

I have been asked why "co-operation" was 
not to be considered as one of the twelve basic 
principles of efficiency. Common ideals striven 
for by a disciplined organization, supernal 
common sense which forgets the little for the 
sake of the larger achievements, necessarily re- 
sult in co-operation, even as the bees, having 
accumulated a full store of honey, seem to obey 
a queen, who "as it happened with many a chief 



150 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

among men, appearing to give orders, is him- 
self obliged to obey commands, far more mys- 
terious than those he issues to his subordinates." 
The fundamentals of discipline are in fact bet- 
ter learned from the government of a beehive 
than from college courses, from armies, or 
from any industrial organization. No bee ap- 
pears to obey any other bee, no bee seems con- 
sciously to co-operate with any other bee, yet 
so perfect is the "spirit of the hive" that every 
bee engrossed in her special task, fatalistically 
acts on the instinct that all other working bees 
are also as busy for the common good, and 
when the drones fail to be useful the working 
bees become consciously indignant and make 
away with them. Co-operation is a matter of 
course, not a virtue ; its absence is the crime. 

Supernal discipline is inspired by a greater 
emotion than fear. 

Frank T. Bullen, in his story praised by Kip- 
ling, "The Cruise of the Cachalot," describes the 
high type of reciprocal faith that in great 
emergency resulted in a perfect discipline, and 
the story in abbreviated quotation illustrates 
what is meant by discipline inspired by faith. 

At Port William, New Zealand, two whale ships lay, 
the Tamerlane and the Chance. The American Tamer- 
lane was neat, smart, and seaworthy, but the colonial 



DISCIPLINE 151 

Chance looked like some poor relic of a by-gone day. 
Old she was with an indefinite antiquity, carelessly 
rigged and vilely unkempt, but the old Chance made a 
better income for her fortunate owners than any of 
the showy, swift, coasting steamers. Captain Gilroy, 
familiarly known as "Paddy," the master of the Chance, 
was unsurpassed as a whale fisher or seaman by any 
Yankee that ever sailed from Martha's Vineyard. 
He was a queer little figure of a man — short, tubby, 
with scanty red hair and a brogue thick as pea soup. 
Overflowing with kindliness and good temper, his ship 
was a veritable ark of refuge for any unfortunate who 
needed help, which accounted for the numerous de- 
serters from Yankee whalers who were to be found 
among his crew. Whaling skippers hated him with 
ferocious intensity, and but for his Maori and half- 
breed body-guard he would have been killed. On that 
storm-beaten coast he knew every rock and tree in 
fog or clear, by day or night, he knew them as the 
seal knows them, and feared them as little. His men 
adored him, they believed him capable of anything and 
would as soon have doubted daylight as the wisdom of 
his decisions. One common interest, their devotion to 
their commander, united the very mixed crowd, six- 
teen European and American sailors, twenty-four 

Maoris and half-breeds The Chance 

was there and three other whalers, competitors. With- 
out any warning the wind flew around into the north- 
ward, putting the four ships at once into a most 
perilous position, and there to leeward loomed grim 
and gloomy one of the most terrific rock-bound coasts 
in the world. The Chance was a good mile and a half 
nearer the shore. The sea, gathering momentum over 
an area extending right around the globe, hurls itself 
upon these rugged shores. As the craft drifted help- 
lessly down upon that frowning barrier, excitement 
grew intense. It would not be possible for them to 
escape if they persisted in holding on, but it was easy 
to see why they did so. Paddy, far to the leeward, 
was in much more imminent danger and it would be 
derogatory in the highest degree to the reputation of 
the other captains were they to slip and run before 
he did. He, however, showed no sign of doing so, al- 



152 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

though they all neared that point from whence no 
seamanship could deliver them and where death, in- 
evitable, cruel, awaited them. A gigantic barrier of 
black naked rock rose seven or eight hundred feet 
sheer from the sea. Nothing broke the immeasurable 
landward rush of the majestic waves towards this 
world-fragment. Against this perpendicular barrier 
they hurled themselves with a shock that vibrated far 
inland and a roar that rose over the continuous thunder 
of the tempest-driven sea. High as was the summit 
of the cliff, the spray rose higher so that the whole 
front of the great rock was veiled in filmy wreaths^ of 
foam. 

Towards this dreadful spot the four vessels were 
being resistently driven. Suddenly, panic-stricken, 
the ship nearest the Chance gave a great sweep round 
onto the other tack. They had cut adrift from their 
whale, terrified beyond endurance into the belief that 
Paddy was going to sacrifice himself and his crew in 
the attempt to lure them with him to inevitable de- 
struction. The other two did not hesitate longer. 

The Chance drew in closely to the seething cauldron 
of breakers. — Who among sailor men having seen a ves- 
sel disappear from their sight under such terrible con- 
ditions ever expected to see her again? 

It appeared that none of the white men on board, ex- 
cept Paddy, had ever before been placed in so seem- 
ingly hopeless and desperate a position, and yet when 
they saw how calm and free from anxiety their com- 
mander was, how cool and business-like the attitude of 
all their dusky shipmates, their confidence kept its 
usual high level. The test was of the severest, for to 
their eyes no possible avenue of escape was open. Along 
that glaring line of raging, foaming water not the 
faintest indication of an opening. The great black wall 
of rock loomed up grim and pitiless. All stood mo- 
tionless with eyes fixed in horrible fascination upon the 
indescribable vortex to which they were being irresist- 
ibly driven. At last, just as the fringes of the back- 
beaten billows hissed up to greet them, the ship plunged 
through the maelstrom of breakers — they were on the 
other side of that barrier, the anchor was dropped, the 
vessel rested like a bird in her nest on a deep still tarn, 



DISCIPLINE 153 

shut in on every side by huge rock barriers. Of the 
furious storm, but a moment before nowling and rag- 
ing, nothing remained but a thunderous hum, and high 
overhead the jagged, twisted, tortured cloud, whirling 
past their tiny oblong of sky. 

Such a feat of seamanship was almost beyond belief. 
The little, dumpy, red-faced figure, rigged like a scare- 
crow, bore no outward visible sign of a hero, but in 
our eyes he was transfigured, as one who in all those 
qualities that go to the making of a man had proved 
himself of the seed royal, a king of men, all the more 
kingly because unconscious that his deeds were so 
exalted. 

If this disreputable little Irishman in the 
midst of filth and inadequacy could maintain, 
by qualities of soul alone, a discipline so ad- 
mirable among a crew of flotsam and jetsam 
under stress so terrible, what ought not to be 
accomplished by leaders with all the advan- 
tages of education, experience, organization, 
with picked crews of workers? Unless I know 
that the employer is without fault, unless I 
know that he is struggling with an inherited, 
vicious condition, I have no patience with so- 
called labor troubles, almost always due to neg- ^ 
lect of elementary precautions for the common 
benefit of master and man. There is at least one 
large business aggregation in the United States 
in which a strike is unthinkable because it is a 
coveted privilege to be admitted to it as a 
worker, a catastrophe to be cast out, and so 



154 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

high is the morale that the workers themselves 
make and maintain standards of conduct far 
stricter than any usual employer would dare 
to enforce, although he may print and post 
rule after rule. 

The time to inspect boiler sheets is before 
they are made up into steam boilers ; the time 
to inspect anchor chains is in the making, not 
when the great steamer is straining with 
broken machinery to the windward of the Scilly 
Islands in a midwinter storm. In all industrial 
life everything is tested, materials, design, ex- 
cept the all-important men. In the little shop, 
rigidity of human inspection is high, the master 
looks over each man, has probably watched him 
for months or years before engaging him ; but 
in the large shop, where personal inspection by 
the master has become impossible, even the most 
elementary safeguards are thrown to the winds 
and men are absorbed with less discrimination 
than the furnace under the boiler absorbs air. 

No man enters West Point without passing 
severe elementary examinations. It is a tre- 
mendous privilege to be admitted, a disaster to 
be excluded. There ought to be a high member- 
ship ideal for every plant, no newcomer admit- 
ted who is not fit in every way, no man cut 



DISCIPLINE 155 

off except for cause. Discipline begins before 
the applicant is taken on. Nine-tenths of all 
the harder discipline ought to be applied to ex- 
clude undesirables, men who by reason of bad 
character, bad and offensive habits, destructive 
tendencies, laziness or other faults are unfit to 
become working members of a high-class or- 
ganization. It is before he is admitted that the 
applicant should hear of the ideals of the busi- 
ness, of its organization, of its methods. 

On the Yukon we divided men into two 
classes, the competent scoundrels and the in- 
competent goody-goodies. If it is a duty to ex- 
clude the morally unfit, it is also a duty to ex- 
clude more vigorously from any particular oc- 
cupation those who are congenitally unfitted to 
make a success of it. A blind man may become 
a self-supporting, useful and successful mem- 
ber of society, a man born without legs may 
become the successful owner and operator of a 
livery stable, driving, harnessing and unhar- 
nessing horses, but a blind man cannot act as 
the lookout on an ocean steamer, the deaf man 
cannot lead an orchestra, and the legless man 
cannot become a foot racer. 

A few hours' investigation would determine 
whether an applicant for a working position 



V 



156 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

were really qualified, but the few hours are 
rarely given. 

The type for the great newspaper is set up 
by linotype operators. Apprenticeship is rig- 
orously limited. Some operators can never get 
beyond the 2,500-em class, others with no more 
personal effort can set 5,000 ems. Do the em- 
ployers test out applicants for apprenticeships 
so as to be sure to secure boys who will de- 
velop into the 5,000-em class? They do not. 
They select applicants for any near reason ex- 
cept the fundamentally important one of innate 
fitness. It is not a question of wages, though 
payment is for timework, but it is a question 
of rapidity, of more news at a later hour, of a 
better utilization of an expensive machine, of 
lessened rent for space — in fact, of greater out- 
put in less time at less cost. 

In railroading, why should each conductor 
and engineer be compelled to secure a watch of 
the best grade, why should this watch be peri- 
odically inspected, yet the future conductors 
and engineers be recruited in the most hap- 
hazard fashion? There is scarcely any greater 
or crueler injustice to a boy or to a young man 
than to allow him to enter on a career for 
which a competent examining committee would 



DISCIPLINE 157 

tell him he was unfit, there being other careers 
for which he is better adapted. 

In coal mining, seams of coal with bands of 
slate, clay, or dirt are not mined, or the coal 
is carefully picked over, or washed ; in lumber- 
ing all material is graded, millions of feet of 
inferior grade being burned; in wheat raising 
the farmer strives to attain grade; standards 
are devised and rigidly adhered to in the live- 
stock markets ; but a company building cars or 
running a factory or mining coal will engage 
and employ almost anyone that applies for 
work, who is not under age, over age, or abso- 
lutely crippled. 

The master organizer, whether saint or as- 
sassin, does not admit those who would make 
trouble and he thus avoids nine-tenths of pos- 
sible insurrection; the master organizer cre- 
ates a collective spirit that prevents another 
nine-tenths of disciplinary troubles, a depen- 
dent sequence that brings his remnant of in- 
subordination down to one per cent of the usual 
and possible and with this one per cent of rem- 
nant he easily deals. 

As I write, the morning papers contain three 
items. "Manchester, England; The Federation 
of Master Cotton Spinners has locked out 



158 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

130,000 men. Berlin, Germany; Negotiations 
with the object of preventing a lockout of the 
metal workers have failed. Nearly 100,000 men 
are affected in Berlin alone, it is estimated 
that at least 500,000 throughout Germany will 
be turned out. Paris, France; 80,000 strikers 
tie up railroads. Entire country may soon be 
involved." 

Whatever the merits of the cases, it is safe 
to say that most, if not all, the principles of ef- 
ficiency were flagrantly absent in these three 
great disputes. In the case of the cotton spin- 
ners the story runs that a foreman discharged 
a worker because he objected that certain as- 
signed work was not in his line. Ought it to 
be possible for two men in the bottom ranks of 
a great business to bring on a strife involving 
130,000? Were his duties made clear to the 
worker before he entered the company's em- 
ploy? Ought the foreman to have had the 
power to discharge him for an objection, on its 
face, entirely reasonable and sustained by his 
f ellow- workers ? In this dispute we have the 
old-type, arbitrary, anarchical organization of 
both masters and men ; defective discipline, re- 
jection of competent conciliatory counsel, pain- 
ful absence of common sense, no high ideals. 






DISCIPLINE 159 

Under efficiency principles there would have 
been staff advisers to invent and build up safe- 
guards against catastrophes of this nature, 
just as levees are built along the banks of 
rivers inclined to flood. Trouble-making men, 
whether workers or foremen, could neither 
have gone on the payroll nor have stayed on it. 
There would have been staff conciliators whose 
business it would be to take in hand incipient 
emotional flames and smother them before they 
grew into great conflagrations. 

The principles of efficiency are not vague V 

platitudes; they are intensely practical, tested, 
tried out, and successful. The strong leader who 
employs them prevents wastes, prevents the 
losses caused the State and community by the 
cessation of labor of hundreds of thousands of 
men, prevents the greater misery and suffering 
due to the enforced idleness of heads of fami- 
lies. While master and man quarrel and bicker, 
the State suffers and women and children pay 
the penalty. Socialism gains recruits not from 
the arguments of its advocates, since no human 
being is naturally a socialist, but from the un- 
endurable shortsightedness and shorter temper 
of individualistic men. 

It is not enough for the owners to have 



160 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ideals; they must be transmitted to the em- 
ployee, and nothing, is easier, as any one who 
has studied the psychology of crowds knows; 
but it is idle to expect the average worker to 
rise above the spirit of the place he works in. 
If it is untidy, disorderly, filthy, if the accom- 
modations for his necessities are lacking or 
vile — saw-tooth lighting, compound condensing 
engines, imposing steel and concrete construc- 
tion, and all the over-equipment to which in 
the past we have pinned our faith, will not in- 
spire the worker. 

On one occasion, beginning an investigation 
of a great machine shop employing one thou- 
sand men, I went the first morning at half- 
past six to the power house. It was a dark 
day early in February, temperature 8 degrees 
below zero and the shops were none too com- 
fortable. When the whistle blew at seven 
o'clock I watched the ammeter line. The power 
consumption rose instantly to what proved to 
be the average maximum and it stayed up. I 
returned at 11 :30 and watched the ammeter 
line stay up until 11 :57, at which time the rec- 
ord, reliable, immediate, and adequate, began 
to round off, suddenly dropping as the noon 
whistle blew. It came up again at 1 o'clock 



DISCIPLINE 161 

and stayed up until 6 o'clock. The two paral- 
lelograms were very different from the flat- 
tened records, shaped like half ellipses, so usual 
in similar shops. It was evident that the su- 
perintendent was a man of discipline, and the 
opinion I formed in that forenoon of his ability 
was confirmed by three years' intimate asso- 
ciation. It was his practice to enter the shop 
at 6 :30 a. m. to stay until after 6 p. m., and I 
heard him severely reprimand a foreman for 
allowing the superintendent's father, a worker 
in the shop, to take off his overalls five minutes 
before closing time. Men worked enthusiasti- 
cally, loyally; and reliably for this master of 
men. 

The way to guard against trouble is to make 
the position desired by a superior man, to al- 
low it to be filled only by a superior man, to 
maintain the position at a high level. If the 
owners and managers of a plant of any kind 
are orderly, enthusiastic, loyal to the work, 
punctual, courteous, decent, competent; if they 
feel their obligations toward those they direct; 
if they are honest, economical, diligent and 
sound in health, they can well demand similar 
qualities in all the employees. I have placed 
order first, believing in the spirit of the pro- 



162 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

verb that order is nature's first law and also 
the remark which Goethe puts into the mouth 
of Mephistopheles : "Make use of time, it is so 
fleeting, but order saves time/' No man ought 
to be allowed to enlist who cannot start in 
with order, enthusiasm, loyalty, reliability, 
who is not courteous and decent ; no man ought 
to expect to stay who is not competent, a good 
brainworker, honest, economical and diligent. 
If in addition he has good health, so much the 
better. 

The self-executing discipline that is worthy 
to be an efficiency principle is the allegiance to 
and observance of all the other eleven princi- 
ples, so that the twelve principles do not be- 
become twelve rules unrelated to each other; 
they do not become separate and easily dis- 
lodged rails of a fence, which is more an indi- 
cation of boundary than a barrier ; they do not 
even become the iron palings of a French fence, 
whose spacings as a boy I had carefully tested 
by my head, knowing that where this member 
could pass my body could slip through — much 
beloved interstices, an ever-ready path to safe- 
ty when pursued by outraged minions of the 
law or exasperated householders or other rep- 



DISCIPLINE 163 

resentatives of the established order against 
which I was in perennial rebellion. As pro- 
moters of observance of arbitrary rules to 
which as a free American boy I had not given 
my assent, these elaborate fences were joyful 
failures. 

It is otherwise with the rabbit-proof, dog- 
proof, hog-proof, bull-proof, wire-netting fence 
whose meshes cannot be squeezed apart, whose 
barbs punish familiarity, which is strong 
enough to kill outright an animal running di- 
agonally against it. 

The twelve principles of efficiency are the 
strands of a net, each interwoven with the 
other so that in reality the first study of any 
organization is to find out to what extent com- 
mon sense, competent counsel, discipline, and 
the other eight principles have been applied 
to the first principle, "Ideals" ; to find to what 
extent ideals, competent counsel, and discipline, 
have been applied to common sense; to find to 
what extent ideals, common sense, competent 
counsel, have been applied to discipline. Any 
system or act of discipline that cannot pass the 
test of each of the other eleven principles is 
near-discipline, not supernal discipline — is a 
remnant of arbitrary individualism, the first 



164 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

misstep in an anarchy that will extend all the 
way down the line. 

No efficiency principle stands alone, each 
supports and strengthens all the rest, each is 
supported and strengthened by the other 
eleven. They are not as mutually interdepen- 
dent as the stones of an arch, each a keystone 
which if removed brings about the collapse of 
all the others ; they are more like the stones of 
a dome, any one of which can be taken 
out, leaving a weakened, but not destroyed 
structure. 






Chapter VII 

THE FIFTH PRINCIPLE: THE FAIR 

DEAL 



We have progressed so rapidly in material prosperity 
that we have lost our heart and our humanity." — 
W. L. Ward. 

Either side gets just what it grabs. Hence if I were 
a workman I would go back into the union and fight 
fiercely for a high, straight wage and eight hours and 
if I were an employer I would battle for straight piece 
work. To my mind the matter of justice is chimerical 
bosh. Either side will get just what it has power to 
take. It is the law, the fight of life. The mechanical 
industrial army is now to America what the Praetorian 
Guard was to the Roman Empire — at once the support 
and menace to the country. 

For this reason I helplessly turn to the sole recourse 
of laughing at the individuals who become flushed in 
their earnestness over the details of the struggle. Nev- 
ertheless I think great work was done on the Santa Fe 
— no one better than myself knows the obstacles to 
overcome in order to make your plan work. It seems 
to have smoothed down in a masterful manner the 
plumage ruffled by the antecedent strike. While I do 
not personally believe in the protestation of a desire 
for fair play, you seem to have convinced notable rep- 
resentatives of both sides of the plausibility of an im- 
possibility." — Extract from letter written July, 1907, 
by the associate editor of "the oldest journal and the 
leading journal of its kind, published at the greatest 
railway center in the world." 

We have ventured to place the extract above in im- 
mediate juxtaposition to Ward's dictum, because it is a 
specific definition of the mental attitude of the employ- 
ing class which is the most serious obstacle in the way 
to a better, a more efficient, order. It formulates the 
doctrines to which the Twelve Principles of Efficiency 
are an earnest gospel of dissent. 

Justice without discretion may do much; discre- 
tion without justice is of no avail. — Cicero. 

Most of man's misfortunes are due to man. — Pliny. 



VII 



THE FIFTH PRINCIPLE: THE FAIR 

DEAL 

THIRTY years ago there was a deep-worn 
trail leading from the plains of Texas 
to the forks of the Platte, a distance of 
800 miles. This trail I could recognize by its 
furrowed hollows if I drove across it in darkest 
night. Long-horned, wild-eyed, cat-hammed 
Texas steers, half a million in a season's drive, 
slowly grazed northward, bringing Texas 
fever with them. The heifers were retained in 
Texas to become the dams of other inferior 
long-horns. All this is changed. Short-horn, 
Hereford, Galloway bulls have resulted in 
graded short-horn, well-rounded, well-man- 
nered progeny which travels north in palace 
stock cars and there is strict quarantine 
against Texas fever. 

The best basis for peace, for harmony, for 
high performance, is selection of the human 

167 



168 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

thoroughbreds, exclusion of the undesirable 
human Texas long-horns. 

It is in this manner that our future officers, 
military and naval, are recruited. Having been 
carefully selected by education tests, by physical 
measurements, and with some reference to 
moral antecedents, they are then given the 
fair deal. There is, therefore, owing to these 
elementary, obvious but insufficient pre- 
cautions, a diminution in the army and navy 
(compared to civil and industrial organizations) 
of dishonesty, of boorishness, of flagrant going 
wrong. During good behavior they remain; 
their promotion is sure although slow, their 
position is high, they are welcome guests in 
society and at the most exclusive clubs. 

Should not these simple selective practices 
based on several thousand years of experience 
be taken to heart by industrial organizers ? 

The captain of a whaler recruits his motley 
crew by fraud and violence and rules them with 
the discipline of the Old Testament : eye for eye, 
tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, 
burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe 
for stripe, lex talionis in all its hideousness. He 
who recruits his shop with scarcely more dis- 
crimination, who does not even attempt to find 



THE FAIR DEAL 169 

out whether the young applicant is suited men- 
tally, physically, and above all in capacity for 
what is to be a life work, who does not attempt 
to find out whether the itinerant applicant is 
morally and industrially a fit associate for the 
other men, an acquisition or a detriment — a 
near-organizer of this kind must necessarily 
rely on foremen as arbitrary and undisciplined 
as himself, must necessarily rely on physical 
rather than on moral suasion. 

The name of Leonidas has thundered down 
the ages. When Xerxes invaded Greece with an 
army of a million men recruited from forty-six 
nations — almost as many nations as are repre- 
sented in the great Pittsburg shops — he of- 
fered Leonidas the kingship of all Greece, but, 
spurning this offer, the King of Sparta selected 
only 8,000 men from the quarreling Greek con- 
tingents. When the pass of Thermopylae was 
turned through the treachery of a Greek, 
Leonidas excluded and sent away all his allies 
except 700 Thespians, and with these and his 
300 Spartans remained to do battle as long as 
one remained alive. The more select the force 
the greater its efficiency. 

When we see ill-mannered children we blame 
the parents, not the children; on the dreadful 



170 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Yukon winter trail in 1900 some men mal- 
treated and maimed their unruly dogs until the 
Northwest mounted police had to interfere, but 
more carefully selected dogs, showing all the 
eager soul that Maeterlinck imputes to them, 
came joyfully jumping around their better 
master, ready to die at his bidding. 

The fair deal, based on the exclusion of the 
many, the selection of the few, must primarily 
spring from the master, not from the man. 
"With what measure the employer metes it 
shall be measured to him again, therefore all 
things whatsoever ye would that men should do 
to you, do ye even so to them." But mere kind- 
liness of heart, mere desire to be fair, does not 
accomplish anything. Most boys would be 
better off in a severe school than under their 
loving, indulgent and weak mothers. 

A railroad brakeman was put on the carpet 
by a superintendent. He came out from the 
ordeal and exclaimed: "That is the whitest 
man who ever lived." "Did he reinstate you?" 
asked his companions. "Reinstate me ! No, he 
fired me ; but he talked to me as if he were my 
father!" 

In practice it is difficult to put up a fair deal 
unless there are three qualities, and these are 



THE FAIR DEAL 171 

rarely found in the same person. The qualities 
are sympathy, imagination, and above all a 
sense of justice. Though the combination is 
rare, the difficulty is not insuperable, for many 
men competent to be leaders through other 
qualities possess one or the other of the three 
essentials; and just as an illustrator, a story 
teller, and a book maker combine to bring out 
a great book, or even as two authors will com- 
bine like Erckmann-Chatrian, one of whom 
supplied the Gothic mysticism the other of 
whom supplied the Gallo-Latin lucidity and 
proportion for a series of great stories of the 
border land between Teuton and Gaul, so ought 
it to be possible to have one man, inspired with 
sympathy, furnish his altruistic dough ; to have 
another man, inspired by imagination, mould 
it and bake it into bread ; to have a third man, 
inspired by justice, carve and divide that bread 
so that each receives his own slice. 

At Skagway in 1897-98 were many packers 
carrying the outfits of the northbound crowd 
over the White Pass. For ten miles out of 
Skagway the road was easy, and then for thirty 
miles over the pass and down the head streams 
to Lake Bennett it was desperately hard. After 
securing a contract the common run of packers 



172 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

had just enough imagination to move an outfit 
the first ten easy miles, there dropping it and 
returning for another cheap contract. The 
prices these near-swindlers received were low, 
since they bid against each other for an easy 
start, accepting from $0.08 a pound down to 
$0.04. They had no sympathy with the man 
whose goods they had dumped before the real 
work was begun; they had still less sense of 
fairness, anxious only to take money and not to 
perform the expected work. A type of a dif- 
ferent kind was George Brooks who contracted 
to deliver outfits at Lake Bennett, 40 miles 
away, in 48 hours or no pay. George Brooks 
charged and received $0.20 a pound. He must 
have been a sympathetic man, for everybody 
liked him; he had imagination, for he knew 
that what the most eager men supremely de- 
sired was to make progress ; and, charging the 
highest price he fulfilled his contracts. In spite 
of $0.20 a pound George Brooks was respected, 
honored, and even loved. In spite of $0.05 a 
pound, the cringing horde of near-packers was 
despised and loathed. 

In the administration of Alaska from its pur- 
chase down to the present time, the fair deal 
has been conspicuously absent, individuals have 



THE FAIR DEAL 173 

been grasping, corporations intolerantly in- 
triguing and oppressive. 

Most good citizens desire to see smuggling 
stopped, desire to see natural resources con- 
served, desire to see Alaska well administered ; 
but the great blunders of an ignorant and self- 
righteous officialdom at Washington and else- 
where which takes tithes of mint, anise and 
cummin and omits the weightier matters of the 
law, judgment, mercy and faith — which strains 
at a gnat and swallows a camel — make many a 
man regret that the opportunity of 1776 cannot 
recur. From the government down, through 
many of the great corporations and labor or- 
ganizations, there has been conspicuous absence 
of the fair deal. 

The successful gambler, the successful prosti- 
tute (history rings with the names and fames 
of both) succeed because they overbalance the 
hideousness of their callings with their appeals 
to the imagination, to the sympathies, to the 
sense of fairness. Let us therefore approach 
the principle of the fair deal with our imagina- 
tion, our sympathies, our sense of fairness alert. 

The great bulk of the population of the 
United States, both relatively and numerically, 
a hundred years hence will be descended from 



w^ 



174 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

those who are the wage-earners today. Not 
dreadnaughts and fortified canals, but what 
our industrial officers make now of the working 
army, will make our future nation. The wage 
earners are our people and our nation; if not 
its backbone and skeleton, if not its brain, 
nevertheless its living flesh and blood. More- 
over, the burden on them is both exalted and 
heavy. It is the men closest to their bread and 
butter who generally have correct instincts as 
to evils even if they often flounder as to reme- 
dies. It is the flesh that quivers with physical 
pain, not the brain nor the skeleton. It is on 
these workers that the duty devolves of bring- 
ing up respectable families on a small and pre- 
carious income. There is not room for all at 
the top, even if all were competent to climb, 
and one of the great problems is to make today 
bearable without taking away the hope of a 
better tomorrow. 

Belief in eugenics is gradually extending. 
Great improvements in offspring having been 
obtained in a few generations, by carefully 
selecting and mating domestic animals and 
birds, it is contended that if the same restric- 
tions were applied to human beings most of 
the evils to which humanity is heir could be 



THE FAIR DEAL 175 

expeditiously eliminated. There is, perhaps, 
much truth but also a triple fallacy in this 
theory. The sheep, the oldest of domesticated 
animals, has lost the power of self-preservation, 
and if man's protecting oversight is withdrawn 
the flock perishes. It is only on certain islands 
where there are no beasts or birds of prey, no 
poisonous weeds, an even and mild climate the 
year around, that sheep can survive unattended, 
until they destroy the grass blades and roots. 

It has been proven again and again that 
thousand-year-old tendencies are not eradicated 
by a few generations of selection. In Darwin's 
experiment all widely divergent breeds of do- 
mestic pigeons reverted very soon to the wild 
blue-rocks from which they had originally been 
derived and been differentiated. Are we wise 
enough today to agree, much less really to 
know, what human traits ought to be perpetu- 
ated ? The Latin often gives to certain instincts 
a charming bias, the Gothic gives to the same 
instincts a repulsive bias. The instinct itself 
cannot be judged by the coloring given it. It 
certainly would have been a pity in bygone 
seons to have perpetuated the good qualities of 
some diplococcus or to have suppressed as un~ 
promising the idiosyncrasies of the original and 



176 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

very objectionable pithecus erectus. Therefore, 
firstly because we do not know and may select 
for preservation the poorest traits and for 
elimination the best ; secondly, because our im- 
provements are only skin-deep and transitory 
at best, and thirdly, because an immense 
amount of devoted effort in this direction will 
only produce infinitesimal results, we cannot 
hope for much from eugenics. 

The case is quite different with the practical 
remedy of immediate common-sense selection. 
A man of sense has little difficulty in selecting 
the kind of horse he wants. If for his children, 
then a broad-browed, gentle, sensible pony able 
to take care of them; if for his own driving, 
then spirited, high-strung, fast, but not vicious 
travelers; if for the plow, medium weight, 
plodding animals without nerves; if for the 
dray, heavy slow animals. 

The disposition of a horse or dog or cat can 
be told even by those with slight experience by 
merely looking at them. Avoid in the horse a 
narrow forehead, wide rolling eyes showing the 
whites, ears flattened back, bared and snapping 
teeth, nervous jerks. 

In selecting human assistants such super- 
ficialities as education, as physical strength, 



THE FAIR DEAL 177 

even antecedent morality, are not as important 
as the inner aptitudes, proclivities, character, 
which after all determine the man or woman. 

My own children showed in the first days of 
their lives well-defined traits of character that 
have never changed, whatever the differences 
of residence, climate, education or health. 

The competent specialist who has supple- 
mented natural gifts and good judgment by 
analysis and synthesis can perceive aptitudes 
and proclivities even in the very young, much 
more readily in those semi-matured, and can 
with almost infallible certainty point out not 
only what work can be undertaken with fair 
hope of success, but also what slight modifica- 
tion or addition and diminution will more than 
double personal power. Politeness, for in- 
stance, is an acquired accomplishment as dis- 
tinguished from kindliness, an innate trait, but 
whole nations are polite and others boorish, and 
many an excellent man has made himself im- 
possible because he was a boor. 

The Tartar nomad who can see the moons of 
Jupiter with his naked eyes, to whom the sun, 
stars and moon are chronometer, almanac and 
compass, may think the earth is the center for 
the solar system, but he is more of an astron- 



178 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

omer than the student who can calculate the 
orbits of comets but cannot recognize the Great 
Horned Spoon of our ancestors nor find the 
North SfSfr 

The empiricist in outward signs of human 
character has, like the Tartar, splendid powers 
of observation, excellent judgment, and very 
valuable knowledge, but may lack familiarity 
with the conclusions of science based on very 
recent investigations. The modern brain stu- 
dent may be deeply versed in special lines yet 
lack practical familiarity with everyday mani- 
festations. 

The weakness of phrenologists, of cranio- 
gnomists, of palmists, lies not in the fact that 
intuitionists and students are not able with 
almost unfailing accuracy to read aptitudes and 
^proclivities, but that with insufficient experi- 
mental verification they have evolved untena- 
ble hypotheses. The theories as to the brain 
held by the old doctor who from a single tooth 
could give age, sex, disposition, and color of 
hair of the person to whom it had belonged, who 
from casual inspection of a letter held upside 
down at arm's length could give accurate de- 
scription of the unknown writer as well as of 
her father, may have been crude, but he was 



THE FAIR DEAL 179 

able to read and understand what is hidden 
from most of us. The weakness of the scien- 
tific investigator who experimentally explores 
each part of the nervous system is that he fails 
to interpret the external signs. He is like the 
bacteriologist who knows the life history of 
comma bacillus but cannot read the evidences 
of tuberculosis in the human face. 

It is of the utmost importance that there are 
specialists, a very few, who are supplementing 
intuition, observation, and good judgment with 
physiological, psychological and anthropologi- 
cal research and study and are thus able to 
give the most important competent counsel that 
can be given for both the fair deal and for 
mutual success, through advising both employer 
and applicant in advance of engagement 
whether the latter is or can possibly be fitted 
for the work that must be done. In the past, 
employers have recklessly engaged anybody, 
however unfit, and have then applied the rem- 
edy of reduction of wages or of discharge. The 
victims of this arbitrariness both in employ- 
ment and in discharge have for protection 
joined unions, and influenced the unions to in- 
sist that wages per hour, not performance, 
shall be the unit, to insist that no equitable 



V 



180 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

relation shall be established between work and 
pay, to object therefore to any determination 
or record of equivalency. 

The horrible injustice lies not in establishing 
equivalency between pay and performance, 
which is as elemental as having accurate and 
certified scales in measuring the weight of 
what is sold or bought, but in retaining a man, 
whether by employer or by union, in a position 
/ to which he is constitutionally unadapted and 
for which he is unfit. 

In a large plant there were thirty-six type- 
writing girls. One who had had three-years 
experience received on this account $12 a week. 
Another recently appointed received only $7 
a week. They were both on the same work. 
Investigation showed that the $12 girl was able 
to direct 390 cards a day, that the $7 girl could, 
without injury and with leisure for rest, direct 
1,800 cards. The $7 girl had keen perceptives, 
but no reflectives. She could by a single glance 
see and remember all the items on the card she 
was copying. The $12 a week girl had weak 
perceptives but fine reflectives. She had to 
read her copy word by word and item by item ; 
she could, however, have written an excellent 
original letter as to the facts on each card. 



THE FAIR DEAL 181 

Notwithstanding her protest and much to her 
immediate regret, she was taken off the work 
for which she was not fitted but to which she 
had given three years of preparation, and she 
was assigned to work for which she was fitted. 
The salary of the girl with perceptives and 
consequently capable of easy accomplishment 
was increased. The employer was at fault in 
assigning a girl to work for which she had no 
aptitude and which she never could do well and 
in keeping her on it for three years. The raises 
in salary, instead of being fair, added to the 
injury since they had the effect of confirming 
her in the belief that she was working along 
right lines. 

Paying the competent girl with perceptives 
$7 a week because she was a novice was also 
unfair. The contention of the unions that the 
girl with perceptives should do no more in a 
day than the misfit senior, is equally unjust to 
both and damaging to civilization, since it pre- 
vents the misfit from taking any joy in her 
work or from rising to a higher level, since it 
prevents the adapted girl from earning what 
she deserves, and it lessens output and there- 
fore increases costs by causing wastes of time 
in operators as well as in equipment. 



182 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

In metallurgy the separation of free-milling 
ores from those that must be cyanided or 
smelted, the further separation of ores that 
have to be roasted from those that can be 
smelted without preliminary roasting, is both 
common-sense and the fair deal to the ores, to 
the treating plant, and to the mine owner. It 
is neither injustice nor discrimination most 
carefully to analyze, test, and sort those to 
whom must be entrusted the task of carrying 
on work of any kind. 

In industrial plants on exactly the same 
work schedules, under the same foremen, under 
the same conditions and on similar machines, 
as to the same standards workers' efficiencies 
vary from 8 per cent up to 140 per cent. The 
8 per cent men were overpaid for what they 
did, the 140 per cent men were underpaid; it 
would have been possible to fill the shop with 
men of the 140 per cent class and to have paid 
them 40 per cent more than standard earnings. 
No other direct act would have so added to con- 
tentment, happiness, freedom from trouble and 
cost reduction. The result could have been 
secured by the slow, painful, and expensive 
process of gradual elimination and selection, or 
it could have been in large part immediately, 



THE FAIR DEAL 183 

easily and cheaply secured through the employ- 
ment of a competent specialist to advise as to 
aptitudes and character, with other examina- 
tions as to experience, skill, and disposition. 

There are, of course, other phases of the fair 
deal. 

Not only ought a boy apprenticed to a trade 
to feel confident that he has not been allowed 
to enter a race in which even before he started 
he was hopelessly outclassed, but he ought to 
see before him a reasonable certainty of tenure 
of position, of definite and increasing wages 
per hour until he has reached a maximum for 
his trade and locality; he ought to be assured 
of decent helpful companions; he ought to be 
certain that all those things essential to his 
health and safety which he cannot do himself 
are being done for him. As to the man, the 
worker, without whom industry would collapse, 
all conditions ought to be standardized. Drink- 
ing water ought to be germ-free, life-destroying 
dust should be sucked away, safeguards should 
surround moving machinery, work illumination 
should be adequate, not ruinous to eyesight. 
Working hours should be reasonable and with- 
out overtime except in great emergencies, 
means should be provided for ascertaining 






184 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

directly his needs, his wishes, of listening to 
his recommendations. 

These general welfare considerations have 
their effect on the contentment of the worker 
and not one of them is recommended from any 
patronizing or altruistic motive. A locomotive 
or other machine is cleaned, housed, kept in 
repair, given good fuel and good water because 
its efficiency is thus increased; and in the in- 
terests of plant efficiency men should be treated 
at least as well as we treat machines. It is for 
mutual, not one-sided, benefit that the workers' 
counsel is considered. 

For many years I was one of the army of 
workers for a great and progressive western 
railroad, the "Q" as we fondly called it. I was 
free to go at any time to the general manager 
and tell him what I thought of things, of the 
grade crossing here, of the freight rate that 
was driving farmers to haul their wheat in 
wagons instead of shipping it, of the frontier 
region that needed advances of seed if crops 
were to be raised the next season. I was one 
of many paths of communication between this 
great manager and the people who at once 
made his road and were dependent upon it. I 
then came east and lived on the greatest of 



THE FAIR DEAL 185 

eastern railroads. I tilted one dark night 
against the point of one of its crossing barriers. 
The hurt, severe as it was, enraged me less 
than the knowledge that I might as well try 
to change the position of the fixed stars as 
unofficially to induce a change in a crossing 
barrier. 

Today when at one of the great railroad 
terminals in New York I walk carrying a heavy 
grip, 600 measured yards from front of station 
to car in which I am to ride; when I have to 
employ two porters, one a street rover to carry 
the grip 300 yards to the gate, the other a red- 
capped part of the organization to carry it the 
other 300 yards; when I am charged extra on 
every ticket on account of the privilege of using 
this palatial terminal — it is not these hardships 
and grievances that exasperate me, but the 
knowledge that countless millions of other trav- 
elers through all the years to come will have to 
submit unheeded to the same impositions which 
spring from lack of imagination, lack of sym- 
pathy, lack of sense of justice; and this insig- 
nificant matter becomes in the multitude the 
inspiration for an anti-railroad crusade for 
which the railroad officials are alone to blame — 
an anti-railroad crusade as to other matters, 



186 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

which would never have arisen if we could 
trust instead of fear, a hostility often as un- 
reasoning as the little mistakes and injustices 
are senseless which stimulated it. 

A great railroad superintendent of motive 
power now at the manufacturing head of one 
of the largest corporations told me that no un- 
reasonable demand had ever been made on him 
by a labor organization that he could not trace 
it back to some act of petty injustice by a fore- 
man of poor judgment. 

A French Canadian worker at Montreal in 
a shop of mammoth proportions, fitted with 
latest machines, remarked with good-natured 
sarcasm: "It is to be regretted that the dis- 
tinguished management has not considered it 
among its obligations to furnish such facilities 
as would make ordinary decency possible 
among its employees." Workers do consider 
and reciprocate as to high or low treatment, 
but it is not such questions as warm shops, 
clean towels, filtered water that most deeply 
and directly concern the man. He is willing to 
work in dripping and dangerous mines, to work 
in stifling sweat shops, to take his life in his 
hands every day provided the wages are tempt- 
ing. It is about wages, directly or indirectly, 



THE FAIR DEAL 187 

that most serious disputes arise. When the 
French Canadians struck in this Montreal shop, 
it was not for facilities that would promote 
decency; it was for more wages, more pay. 

It is for this reason that wages loom up as 
the most important question in industrial life 
today, although aptitude, therefore pleasure or 
success in the work undertaken, is more funda- 
mental to individual, corporate, and national 
welfare. The individual is born with the in- 
stinct of self-preservation, of race-preserva- 
tion, of acquisition and hoarding, the latter 
probably merely a specialized development of 
the squirrel's nut hoard, the wolf's buried 
meat. We have interposed the device of wages 
between basic need and its satisfaction. Wages 
therefore acquire the importance of both, and 
wages are also the cushion between anarchy 
and civilization. Men and women twenty-four 
hours without food become wild beasts; the 
human baby becomes fretful and then an an- 
archist if there is ten minutes' delay, instinc- 
tively knowing that nature gave it a mother 
able instantly to satisfy its craving. We have 
societies for the suppression of our natural 
instincts, societies for the prevention of cruelty, 
for the preservation of birds, for safety appli- 



188 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ances, for art collections and for libraries; we 
have in our legislatures endless debates over 
insignificant matters; but where is there any 
rational study of wages, much less any society 
to enforce fair wages or any legislation in favor 
of fair wages ? Labor unions use the big stick 
to force wages up, employers make secret com- 
binations to keep wages down, as if a clock, 
either too fast or too slow, were not equally 
unreliable. 

No other subject is so disturbing as wages, 
or requires so much of the "f air deal." If plans 
for wage amelioration, successfully tried on a 
large scale, have been at best only experimental, 
they at least have interest as showing how this 
delicate subject was approached with the fair 
deal in mind. 

The worker wants as high pay as he can 
enforce; the employer wants his output to be 
as cheap as that of his competitors, for if it is 
not he will be driven out of business. The 
worker cannot be expected to work for an em- 
ployer for less pay than is paid under similar 
conditions for the same class of work by an- 
other employer. The wage payer cannot be 
asked to pay higher wages than the current 
rate. Because this question is a dangerous 



THE FAIR DEAL 189 

explosive, because any stray spark, concussion, 
or blow may set it off, it should be as far as 
possible standardized and nine-tenths of the 
opportunities for clash be eliminated. 

As at present paid, wages come neither under 
status, contract, nor individual effort. Like 
many other innovations, wages have preserved 
some of the worst features of all three systems 
and avoided the best. 

The worker is in status when he comes, 
stays, and goes under the orders of the em- 
ployer. There is, however, no status when he 
is laid off without pay or his hours are cut 
down. He contracts his time for a fixed sum 
per hour, but he does not, like other contrac- 
tors, agree to deliver any equivalent in output 
for the pay received. On day rate and even 
on piece rate he cannot use individual effort to 
increase indefinitely his earnings. He is partly 
a partner since the machines belong to the 
employer. 

Piece rates have offered no solution. They 
were tried in order to abolish status and sub- 
stitute contract and individual effort. Status 
cannot be wholly abolished. A shop is more 
highly organized than a flock of sparrows or 
gulls. There must be regular hours, there are 



190 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

so many dependent sequences that individuals 
must conform to the general plan. A piece rate 
is, however, an endeavor to establish an equiv- 
alent in output for money paid. 

If a man's wage rate is $0.30 an hour, if it 
is estimated or guessed that he can do a certain 
piece of work in an hour, a piece rate of $0.30 
is established. He is told to go ahead on the 
supposition that he will earn more than $0.30 
an hour. The employer would be very careful 
how he attempted to reduce the $0.30 rate per 
hour, but if he finds that the worker earns 
$0.50 an hour he immediately begins to scheme 
to reduce the piece rate. 

When high-speed steel began to come into 
use, the machine shops at Roanoke of the Nor- 
folk & Western were on piece rates under an 
agreement. Although the use of high-speed 
steel on modern wheel lathes has reduced to 
one hour the time of tire turning which was 
18 hours with carbon tools on an old lathe, the 
machinists refused to permit readjustment of 
the rates. 

It is evident that piece rates installed twenty 
years ago must be inequitable today. 

On the one hand, wages have risen with the 
increased cost of living. On the other hand, 



THE FAIR DEAL 191 

Improved facilities have greatly increased the 
ability to turn out work. Piece rates must 
necessarily be readjusted and their readjust- 
ment is one of the industrial tugs of war. 

As to this most delicate of wage questions, 
peace and harmony have followed the follow- 
ing fair-deal provisions : 

1. — Decimal wage rates per hour are estab- 
lished. 

2. — These decimal wage rates run as local 
conditions require, from $0.20 an hour down 
and up in full two-cent intervals, therefore 
$0.16, $0.18, $0.20, $0.22, $0.24, $0.26, etc., 
perhaps down to $0.06 and up to $0.60 or more. 

3. — The wage rate at which a man is en- 
gaged or retained is subject to negotiation and 
agreement between him and the employer. 

4. — Men shall not be required to work over 
ten hours a day without a bonus. 

5. — Normal hours shall be nine a day. 

6. — A time equivalent shall be determined 
for every operation. 

7. — No worker is under any obligation to at- 
tain the time equivalent. His wages do not de- 
pend on it, but on the time he is under orders. 






\s 



V 



192 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

8. — Time equivalents are subject to revision 
either up or down as conditions change, never 
because of high individual skill. 

9. — Revision is made by competent disinter- 
ested specialists and both parties know why, 
when, where, and what revisions are made. 

If all these provisions are part of the stand- 
ard practice of the shop, if they are accepted 
when a man contracts his time, serious dis- 
agreements can arise only as to (3). It is in- 
evitable that wages will from time to time rise 
or fall, partly because of varying cost of living, 
partly because of supply and demand. In cer- 
tain districts in Alaska, owing to both causes, 
wages have been as high as one dollar an hour, 
and when the Klondike gold rush began, nearly 
all the miners at the great Treadwell Mines 
near Juneau took French leave. They made no 
demand for higher wages, realizing that an in- 
crease could not be granted, and what they 
wanted was not an increase of 10 per cent on 
a $0.30 rate, but a chance to earn $10 to $15 
a day. 

Standards could, to a large extent, automati- 
cally govern promotion from one class to an- 
other on account of gain in experience, in- 



THE FAIR DEAL 193 

creased age, or meritorious record. A time 
ought to come when a wholesale advance or 
recession in basic rate could be referred to 
arbitrators or advisory commissions so as to 
minimize opportunity for disagreement. 

In one plant the following plan is success- 
fully operated. A man capable of realizing 100 
per cent efficiency is rated at $0.28 an hour, 
and if he attains this efficiency he is given in 
addition 20 per cent bonus. If he can only 
realize 60 per cent efficiency, his wage rate 
falls to $0.20 and there is no bonus. If he de- 
livers 80 per cent efficiency the hourly rate 
rises from $0.20 or it drops from a previous 
$0.28 to $0.26 an hour, and the bonus becomes 
3.25 per unit. 

Competition and trade conditions do not per- 
mit a rate of $0.28 for an efficiency of only 60 
per cent, but owing to the saving in overhead 
charges costs do permit an increase of 68 per 
cent in pay for an increase of 66 per cent in 
work. On the other hand, workers in this par- 
ticular trade feel entitled to a basic rate of 
$0.28, a rate that ought to be paid if the work- 
ers are as competent as they claim. 

The other eight provisions are almost self- 
evident. Undecimal rates, as 19 4/9 cents ar 



194 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

hour, are an abomination and without perma- 
nent excuse. At one great establishment where 
the efficiency of the men in many instances was 
below 50 per cent, where it averaged no higher 
than 60 per cent, where an increase in efficiency 
of 20 per cent was attainable, the most strenu- 
ous and indignant objections were made to 
standardizing this rate at $0.20. Rates of 
$13.50 per week divided by 56 hours to find the 
hourly rate are also an abomination. The 
greater accuracy of records and the greater 
accuracy of supervision far more than offsets 
the slight cost of standardizing upwards irregu- 
lar rates, even in an old shop. 

Since the United States adopted a decimal 
dollar, I believe in 1804, it does seem ridiculous 
constantly to revert to quarters and eighths of 
dollars, or to advance a man a half-cent per 
hour, or, what is worse, give him an increase 
of $0.25 a day for a nine-hour day. Calculat- 
ing machines, wage tables, are only half as 
large on a $0.02 interval basis as on a $0.01 in- 
terval. If a boy is advanced from $0.10 an 
hour to $0.30 in ten years he can just as well 
be advanced in two-cent steps as to be advanced 
in one-cent steps, and the advances can be so 
timed as not to decrease his aggregate earnings. 



THE FAIR DEAL 195 

It is conceivable that a man working 8 hours 
can do a full rational day's work. The same 
work could be done with less wear and tear in 
9 hours. Would I prefer to walk 3 miles an 
hour for 9 hours, or to walk 3.375 miles an 
hour for 8 hours? I think I might prefer to 
walk 2.7 miles an hour for 10 hours. A normal 
work day of 9 hours with temporary variations 
in gangs between 8 and 10 hours has been 
found to work well. If, in balance with the 
shop, a ten-man gang is working 9 hours a day 
and one man drops out, until he returns or can 
be replaced the gang must either work harder, 
work longer, or disturb the balance of de- 
pendent work. Rather than drive harder it is 
more equitable to pay for the extra normal 
time required. 

Longer hours than 10 are wholly deleterious 
to both worker and shop. I never knew any 
advantage to result from promiscuous overtime. 
It should always be a serious emergency re- 
source, and the bonus should be very high to 
men, the loss of shop efficiency and increased 
cost be brought home to each official. 

The time equivalent for every operation is 
the key that eliminates misunderstandings. All 
the great exchange business of the world is 



196 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

today done on a basis of equivalency. A bale 
of cotton, a bushel of wheat, is standardized at 
so many pounds and the dollar is standardized 
at so many grains. 

The worker is selling time, just as a coal- 
mine operator sells coal; but the purchaser is 
not buying time nor coal; he buys output and 
heat units. The equivalency between operation 
and time (not wages) is of transcendent im- 
portance, exactly as equivalency between heat 
unit and fuel is of importance. Happily both 
can be scientifically and accurately determined, 
and even if we never realize the equivalent, the 
starting point for our modern engines and 
their improvement over their prototypes of 
fifty years ago is that we know that 776 foot 
pounds are the equivalent of an increase in 
temperature of one degree F. of one pound of 
water. 

No maker of an engine is under obligation 
to realize this equivalent. Neither is any 
worker under any obligation to attain a time 
equivalent. His wages do not depend on it. He 
is paid just the same whether he ever realizes 
a single equivalent, even though in every case 
the equivalents are normally attainable under 
standardized conditions and standardized oper- 



THE FAIR DEAL 197 

ation. One hundred yards in ten seconds is 
not a normal equivalent ; four miles for a single 
hour, twenty miles a day for six days each 
week, are normal equivalents. 

Owing- to changed conditions, never owing to 
wages, equivalents to remain fair equivalents 
must be revised. When a miner of precious ore 
wishes to sell, when a smelter wishes to buy, 
neither takes the word of the other. Both 
employ skilled and certified assayers who assay 
from the same sample of the ore and determine 
its value, and if they do not agree other assays 
are made; on these scientific assays millions of 
dollars are paid out with never a question or 
dispute. If accounts between two mercantile 
firms are muddled, a certified accountant is 
called in who unravels the truth and on his 
statement settlements and even court awards 
are made. Similar revision of equivalents, al- 
though no wage rates are involved, should be 
made by scientific specialists, employing scien- 
tific methods, revising solely in the interest of 
accuracy and truth, never to give either party 
an unfair advantage. All these provisions have 
been applied, and applied successfully, on a 
large scale if not completely all in the same 
plant. They have worked as intended, they 



r 



198 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

have eliminated wage disputes and wage dis- 
agreements, since the inculcated habit of fair- 
ness has reacted on the basic wage question 
and the employer particularly has proved will- 
ing without demand to raise the basic rate. The 
vice-president of a great railroad system of 
10,000 miles who has applied many of these 
provisions to the wage question states as one of 
his guiding principles that if other roads in his 
territory increase rates so as to equal his rates, 
he will at once make a readjustment upward of 
the basic rates in order to maintain a differen- 
tial in favor of his employees. 

What wages buy is fully as important as the 
rate. It may be well-nigh impossible to force 
wages up 20 per cent but, it is well known that 
a French family can live in plenty on what an 
American family wastes. I know a man, now 
a millionaire, who at the age of thirty-five was 
still working for $40 a month as a beef carrier 
in Chicago. He saved money and bought a 
farm, sold the farm and went into the milling 
business. I know another man, now a million- 
aire, who started as a carpenter, built brew- 
eries, saved money until he had a brewery of his 
own. I know a young man now chief assistant 
to the executive of a great plant. On a salary 



THE FAIR DEAL 199 

of $30 a month he married a thrifty Scotch 
lassie and the dimes they saved from the start 
seemed as large as cart wheels. 

If the American worker would put efficiency 
into his family expenditures his income would 
go 50 per cent further. It is unfortunate that 
he concentrates his attention on rate of wages 
instead of on the equivalent he is giving the 
employer. It is unfortunate that the em- 
ployer shies at the suggestion of a 10 per 
cent advance and pays scant if any attention 
to a 50 per cent inefficiency, two-thirds of which 
is his own fault. The combination of thrifty 
worker, high equivalent, fair-minded and pro- 
gressive employer, wages far above the aver- 
age, insures lowest costs, just as certainly as 
piano wire at a high price per pound will make 
a stronger, longer, bridge than cast iron at one 
cent a pound. 

Like the other efficiency principles the fair 
deal should be standardized; it should be 
moulded by each of the other eleven; it should 
be under the particular care of a very com- 
petent staff official, aided and assisted by many 
specialists, character analysts, hygienists, 
physiologists, psychologists, bacteriologists, 
safety-appliance and light and heat engineers, 



200 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

economists, wage specialists, accountants and 
lawyers — in short, by all the available and ap- 
plicable knowledge in the world. Provided for 
in the organization, founded on ideals, on com- 
mon-sense; developed by competent advisers, 
simplified by vigorous exclusion of the unfit, the 
unfair, it should be carried into effect through 
reliable, immediate and adequate records, 
through standard practice, definite instructions, 
through schedules and through all the other 
efficiency principles. 

The fair deal is the last of the five altruistic 
principles, principles so fundamental that we 
find them applied by a she-bear to the bringing 
up of her cubs; principles inculcated by Old 
and New Testament, by every great religion. 

The object of collating wise practices of ad- 
ministration under a few simple heads is that 
each may regularly survey his own task from 
the point of view of each one of the principles, 
and thus not only prevent the backsliding that 
ultimately results in disaster, but make for- 
ward progress so that he who started as a 
disciple soon becomes a master to whom we 
turn for competent counsel. 

Other five principles, (therefore not includ- 
ing standardized operation and efficiency re- 



THE FAIR DEAL 201 

ward,) are not practiced by the she-bear, are 
very inadequately inculcated by the great re- 
ligious teachers. 

They are as modern as the gas engine, the 
dynamo, the steam turbine ; they are almost as 
modern as the flying machine ; they are evolved 
to cover modern complex conditions. The se- 
quence in which they will be discussed is not 
essential. Records will be first considered, but 
records can be neither reliable, immediate, nor 
adequate until nearly everything else has been 
standardized. The subject of records will 
therefore, of necessity, be treated theoretically, 
showing at least the backbone of essential rec- 
ords from which less essential records spring 
like ribs. There are records of standard condi- 
tion, of standard operation, records of disci- 
pline and records of the fair deal; but the 
essential records of cost and efficiency will be 
developed from an underlying, universal and 
exceedingly simple formula, which covers oper- 
ating efficiencies and standard operating costs 
of materials, of men, and of installation. 



VIII 

THE SIXTH PRINCIPLE: RELIABLE, 

IMMEDIATE, ADEQUATE, AND 

PERMANENT RECORDS 



The potter sitting at his work, turns the wheel 
about with his feet; he is always carefully set to his 
work, and maketh all his work by number. — Ecclesi- 
asticus, 38. 

Where there are many hands, deliver all things in 
number and weight; and put all in writing that thou 
givest out or receivest in. — Ecclesiasticus, 42. 



Chapter VIII 

THE SIXTH PRINCIPLE: RELIABLE, 

IMMEDIATE, ADEQUATE, AND 

PERMANENT RECORDS 

WHEN a child touches the red-hot end 
of a poker, the information, advice, 
notice, record is reliable and lasting, 
also immediate and adequate. The scar is a 
perennial reminder of the mistake. Many of 
Nature's warnings are reliable, immediate, and 
permanent; they reach us and other animals 
through the senses — we hear, we see, we smell, 
we taste, above all principally, we feel. There 
are two nerves from the brain to the eyes, two 
to the ears, two to the nose, two to the palate ; 
there are several hundred between body surface 
and brain. Very few people allow themselves 
to be burned, because the penalty is reliable, 
immediate, and adequate; but they are not as 
shy about more deadly disease germs (probably 
a thousand people die of tuberculosis for one 

205 



206 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

who is burned to death) because the result is 
not reliable nor immediate. 

The object of records is to increase the 
' scope and number of warnings, to give us more 
information than is usually received immedi- 
ately through our senses. A steam boiler 
with water in it, a fire under it, and all outlets 
closed, is more dangerous than a hot poker. 
There is very little to indicate the imminence 
of disaster. It is too hot to touch with the hand, 
although it is conceivable that a spot in it 
might be so insulated as to permit the engineer 
to tell by feeling whether it was becoming too 
warm. A thermometer would give a better 
record; but usually there are three recording 
instruments, each reliable and immediate, one 
of them in addition adequate. The engineer 
watches his pressure gauge, he watches his 
water-level glass, and the safety valve will pop 
even if he has fallen asleep. It is because of 
these three devices, one of which is independent 
of the man, that there are so few boiler explo- 
sions. All around us are many natural forms 
of advice, of records — the word is throughout 
used in its largest sense. 

The object of records is to annihilate time, 
to bring back the past, to look into the future, 









RECORDS 207 

to annihilate space, to condense a whole rail- 
road system into a single line, to magnify the 
thousandth part of an inch to foot-rule meas- 
urement, to gauge the velocity of a distant star 
by the shifting of the lines in the spectroscope, 
to annihilate temperature by enabling us to 
read the millionth of degree or the 10,000-de- 
gree difference between moon and sun heat. 

Animals make and use records, reach out to 
each other through time and space; and the 
naive surprise of the doe when the stag appears 
does as much credit to her modesty as the trail 
of musk left in her footsteps along many miles 
and for many days does credit to her involun- 
tary common sense. Man alone reaches out to 
man through millenniums; and the pictures 
carved in stone, the hieroglyphics pressed in 
brick or cut in granite, tell us more about the 
intimate lives and philosophies of the Hittites, 
of the Egyptians, than we know of our own im- 
mediate ancestors, the Germans or the Gauls — 
than we know of our immediate neighbors, the 
Indians. Pictures and writing were a great in- 
vention ; the reducing of music to written form 
so it could be reproduced was even more mar- 
velous, since through the eye we recreate for 
the ears, thus bridging the gap between the 



208 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

senses. The perpetuation of sound through 
ages in the phonograph disk, the perpetuation 
of movement on a long film, these are part of 
man's triumph through records- The phono- 
graph disk is, next to the brain, the most mar- 
velous, if not the most useful, record man pos- 
sesses, since all the throbs, moans, triumphs, 
all the nuances of a hundred instruments and 
of a hundred voices, pulsations of the air, are 
recorded by the needle point in a microscopic 
line; and that line, that perfect record, gives 
us again the same air pulsations, the same 
great instrumental and vocal chorus. 

Records are anything that give information. 
Men have always felt the need of records, but 
they have not always known what they wanted 
nor how to secure them. In the great industrial 
plants one knows not whether to marvel most 
at the absence of reliable, immediate, and ac- 
curate records, or at the superabundance of 
permanent records, collected with painstaking 
and at great expense, but neither reliable, im- 
mediate, nor adequate. Even if the latter have 
all these qualities, there is often great duplica- 
tion, and as a consequence we find an immense 
amount of accumulation of very little value, 
which has cost far more than it need. An ex- 
ample of duplication may be found in the coal 



RECORDS 209 

records for locomotives. Expenses of operating 
locomotives are generally recorded pt?r mile, 
but suddenly a parallel set will crop up showing 
miles run per ton of coal. It has not been un- 
usual in a great corporation's records to find 
a great variety of monthly tabulations, and 
when inquiry is made it is finally unravelled 
that . twenty years before some president 
wanted a certain set of records, that his suc- 
cessor wanted a different set, which were 
started in parallel, that a third and fourth in- 
cumbent added their requests, but the old tabu- 
lations continue to be made and painstaking I 
clerks work their monotonous lives away in 
neat compilation that no one has looked at, 
much less used, for a decade. 

When the tramp piled and repiled the same 
cord of wood first on one side of the yard, then 
on the other, he was working efficiently but to 
no purpose ; and having the soul of an artist he 
finally rebelled. 

A clerical force may be hard at work, but it 
may accomplish very little and in the larger 
acceptance of the word it is inefficient, even as 
a hard-working steam engine using 50 pounds 
of steam per horse-power hour is inefficient in 
spite of its diligent consumption of coal. 
There are records of all kinds, many of them 



210 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

essential to our continued existence. There are 
in a much more limited way records of cost; 
and between the two extremes of universal 
records (as the swing of the earth in its sea- 
sons or the slow aging of every living and in- 
animate thing) on the one side, and cost rec- 
ords on the other, come records of efficiency, 
and these are what we particularly need in the 
I present phase of industrial life. We have not 
yet learned to use to any great extent the con- 
ception of efficiency. We are interested in what 
eggs cost per dozen, not in the weight of each 
egg; we ask the price of coal per ton, but 
rarely know whether it contains 10,000 or 
15,000 heat units per pound; we violently re- 
sist a demand for a 10 per cent increase in 
wages, but we tolerate a 50 per cent inefficiency 
in the worker. Not one in ten thousand knows 
even approximately the cost of food. Its price 
is known, but not its value, and if a curve of 
food values per pound should be drawn, and 
above each item its price, the line would look 
like the record of the seismograph during an 
earthquake, or the record of a magnetic needle 
during an eruption on the sun. 

The whole United States was frantic in 1896 
over the ; money question, and not one in a 



RECORDS 211 

thousand of the gold advocates knew that 
owing to violent fluctuations in supply and use 
gold had varied in value more than any other 
staple, not from hour to hour, as gold bonds 
and gold stocks fluctuate in value on the stock 
exchange, but from decade to decade. One of 
the tasks of modern scientific management, of 
efficiency and standard-practice engineering — 
two names for the same ideals — is to convert 
efficiency records into cost records, since the 
language of costs is understood by all, the lan- 
guage of efficiency only by the few. It is, of 
course, generally true that costs will decline as 
efficiency increases, but this is not always so. 

A jeweller may work with the same efficiency 
setting on one day a $2,500 diamond in a gold 
stickpin and the next day setting a $0.25 bit of 
glass in a brass pin. Costs have varied, but not 
efficiency. A Japanese miner may work for $0.20 
a day and an Alaskan miner for $15.00 a day. 
Each may work with equal efficiency, but the 
cost is very different. On the other hand, a 
farmer, from the same field, planted to the same 
crop, plowed by the same man, team, and plow, 
raises increasing crops of the same grain ; but 
wages, land values, and the price of horse feed 
might also increase so that decreased* 1 ost will 



212 



THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 



not always directly flow from increased ef- 
ficiency. 

In the refinement essential for the control of 
modern operations, it becomes increasingly 
necessary to state efficiencies even if we talk 
costs. \ 



.♦ * 



% + 



Efficiency of Labor and Cost of Locomotive Bepairs. 

1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 



















. 


















> 


•> w 


















5 


S ioo 
















a 


J3 




\ 












o 


^ 90 




V 


92 


^ 


^^" 


n% 




o 






\ 8 9 


t S 




^--^T 








>, 80 




\ 


^< 




37* 






a> 


a 




A 






$1683 






CO 


.2 70 


1 


/ [ 


Ml. 

$1677 




\ 










B 




/ 






\ 






a 


H 60 




/ 






\ 






03 


*a 


55* 


f 






\ 






«« 


© -50 












$1243 






U i 
















o 


e 40 
















O 


n 
















ej 


















d 


















a 


















<1 



- $2200 



$2400 



$2000 



$1800 



$1600 
$1400 



$1000 



Average wgt. of locos. 75.63 79.50 81.74 82.98 82.98 
Mileage per loco. 3160. 4900. 4250. 4641. 6200. 

failure 
Tonnage hauled per 685. 725. 765. 770. 

loco. mi. 



796. 



The Engineering Magazine 
RECORD OF EFFICIENCY AND COSTS IN LOCOMOTIVE REPAIRS 

As a contribution to the solution of this prob- 
lem a universal formula of cost and efficiency 
has been evolved which has the further advan- 
tage of showing what records are really essen- 
tial and necessary, what form they ought to 
take and what records are useless, confusing, 
and to be omitted. All the necessary reliable, 



RECORDS 213 

immediate, adequate, and permanent records 
can be obtained and maintained for less ex- 
pense than is usually incurred for misleading, 
delayed, inefficient, and ephemeral records. 

The costs of modern operations consist of 
three elements. For instance, in a recent year 
it may have cost to operate all the railroads of 
the United States approximately: 

For materials. $ 524,000,000 

For personal services 1,021,000,000 

For interest, depreciation, and other cap- 
ital charges 1,210,000,000 

■ 

$2,755,000,000 

Omitting millions, we can set up the formula : 

Total cost = Material + Per. service -f- Invest, charges 

2,755 = 524 + 1,021 + 1,210 
C (actual) =M (actual) + S (actual) + 1 (actual) 

Let us assume that extended investigations 
show very inefficient use of materials, very in- 
efficient use of personal services and also over- 
equipment, and that from a practical point of 
view it might be possible to accomplish the 
same general result with $370 of materials, 
$780 of personal service, and $600 of invest- 
ment charges.* The formula of standard cost 
then becomes: 

* These figures are used only for illustration, not as the expres- 
sion of a conviction. 



214 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

C M S I 

(standard) = (standard) + (standard) + (standard) 
$1,750 = $370 + $780 + $600 

The efficiency of the whole operation is : 

C standard $1,750 „ e . ,_ , , ~, . ^ 

7^ — i — r- - = o ff rr =63.5 per cent.=Total efficiency=E 
C actual 2,755 

{ The relation of standard cost to actual cost 
gives the efficiency. This can be applied to each 
sub-part : 

Material cost standard $370 ^ _ Material 

Material cost actual $524 = 70 - 6 /°- efficiency 

Labor cost standard $780 „* a of Service 

Labor cost actual " $1,021 ~~ " efficiency 

4 Investment cost standard $600 ,q ^ __Investment 

Investment cost actual ~~ $1,210 " " efficiency. 

Actual costs can next be stated in terms of 
standard cost and of efficiency: — 

m . - . Total standard cost $1,750 m 

Total actual ^1=^-^^^- =-^- =$2,755 

Total Standard cost Standard cost Standard cost 

actual__ of material of service of investment 

cost " "" Material efficy. ' Service efficy "^Invest, efficy. 

m ^ , t $370 , $780 , $600 

Total actual cost=^+;^+— % =$2,755 



RECORDS 215 

If we know in advance the standard or theo- 
retical costs, if we know the current efficiencies, 
we can predetermine actual costs. What we all 
desire is to make the industrial machine as 
efficient as possible, to bring efficiencies up to 
100 per cent, and when we do this actual costs 
will be the same as theoretical costs. We must 
first attack the problem theoretically. We must 
have standards and we must have efficiencies. 
When a pump or steam engine is tested, by 
every means we ascertain ideals ; we then com- 
pare actualities with the ideals and we ascer- 
tain efficiencies. Similarly, in the great indus- 
trial problem we set up ideals, we measure 
against them actual performance, and we as- 
certain efficiencies, and as for pumps, and for 
steam engines, so also do we use these efficien- 
cies to prophesy future costs. 

When actual and ideal performances are both 
recorded the relation in one month will gener- 
ally serve to predetermine efficiencies in the 
next month, the relation of one year to prede- 
termine efficiencies in the next year. 

The elementary formula is, however, wholly 
inadequate for a real determination of efficien- 
cies and has in fact led to most serious miscon- 
ceptions and consequent mistakes. 



216 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Reference has already been made to the folly 
of the man who buys coal by the ton without 
knowing whether it contains 10,000 or 15,000 
heat units per pound, who scrutinizes the cost 
of personal service without knowing its qual- 
ity, invests in new machinery without counting 
its hourly cost, or without being able to keep it 
busy. 

The cost of materials depends on two factors, 
\ the quality and the price. 

Material cost=Quantity of units at price per unit. 

M c =Qm Pm 

What is wanted is that QP shall be a mini- 
mum cost. 

The usual impulse and plan is to attack the 
price, P. This does not work. It is almost im- 
possible to lower price, yet maintain quality. 
There is a constant demand for better quality 
and the tendency of prices is upwards. In the 
last ten years railroad presidents would have 
had great difficulty in buying steel rails at 
less than $28 a ton. Q, quality, is the impor- 
tant factor. There is almost no limit to the re- 
ductions that can be made in quantity. Let us 
take coal as an example. The ordinary indus- 
trial-plant furnace, boiler and engine, use five 
to seven pounds of coal per horse-power hour. 



RECORDS 217 

By buying better coal, better furnace, better 
boiler, better engine and better service, coal 
consumption can be reduced to two pounds, in 
some instances to one. 

Efficiency of production of power as to mate- 
rial is raised from 14 to 40 per cent up to 100 
per cent. The distribution of power may, how- 
ever, be very inefficient. Air, water, and steam 
pipes may leak, there may be seven voltage 
drops in electric transmission. For 100 horse 
power produced in power house only 80 may 
reach the places of use. There is usually great 
waste in the use of power ; lights burn, pumped 
water is wasted, steam blows through steam 
hammers, compressed air is used to ventilate 
rooms or blow the dust out of clothes. The ef- 
ficiency of use is rarely above 70 per cent. As- 
suming the efficiency of production to be as 
high as 70 per cent, that of transmission as 
high as 80 per cent, that of use as high as 70 
per cent, we have an end maximum efficiency 
of 39.2 per cent. If, as often happens, produc- 
tive efficiency is as low as 14 per cent (the air- 
brake pump uses about 200 pounds of steam 
per horse-power hour), if the efficiency of 
transmission is as low as 60 per cent (I have 
known power steam pipes to be laid unlagged 



218 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

through running brooks), if the efficiency of 
use is 30 per cent (cities where water is me- 
tered use only one-third as much as those where 
it is furnished without check as to quantity), 
then the end efficiency of 14 per cent produc- 
tion, 60 per cent transmission and 30 per cent 
use is only 2.52 per cent. It is not because of 
price, but because of the dependent sequence 
of inefficiencies in quantity that QP usually 
admits of such very great reduction. 

Materials actual== T == T %^-^=— 

±!,JlV e, mq -C/mp 

If EE'E" is only 2.5, P st could be increased 
40 times without adding to cost, but a compara- 
tively small increase in P st doubling it for in- 
stance, may be the easiest, quickest and most 
economical way of increasing EE'E" mq to 10 
per cent, 40 per cent, or even 90 or 100 per 
cent, as the case may be. 

Therefore, in the last generation railroad 
executives were willing to pay more for steel 
rails than for iron rails, fuel consumers are 
willing to pay more per ton for oil than for 
coal, bridge builders prefer expensive wire 
rope to cheap cast-iron, for in each case as 
quality goes up, quantity goes down much more 
rapidly. What is true of materials is equally 



RECORDS 219 

true of personal service. Labor, like material, 
consists of both quantity and quality. The 
quantity of labor is measured by time, its qual- 
ity by what it accomplishes. The formula for 
personal service becomes. 

S=time in hours multiplied by wages per hour 
S=TW 

When TW seems too high there is generally 
an insane desire on the part of those in control 
to reduce W. This is naturally resisted most 
strenuously by the wage earner. As in mate- 
rials, it is not the price of the unit per hour . 
that counts, but the quantity used. Also as in / 
materials, there are inefficiencies of initial 
quantity, inefficiencies of distribution, and in- 
efficiencies of use. Let us assume schedules of 
different rates of pay for different classes of 
workers. I have known industrial plants to en- 
gage 600 men when 300 would have been suffi- 
cient ; I have known 12 men to be assigned to a 
job that 2 men could have done. There is in- 
efficiency of initial quantity of 50 per cent to 
17 per cent. 

I have known men that ought to have been 
earning $6 a day, in reality earning only $3 
because they were in the wrong place, paid $3 
for work that a $1 a day boy could have per- 



220 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

formed better; I have known a $75 a day ex- 
pert to be kept busy on clerical work that could 
have been done better by an $18 a week clerk. 
These are examples of inefficiency of distribu- 
tion, varying from 17 per cent down to 4 per 
cent. 

The inefficiencies of use are so tremendous 
that their cause has to be explained. Up to 
about a hundred years ago, with the exception 
of a few windmills, a few sailing ships, and a 
few cumbersome water wheels, all the work 
of the world was done by the muscular energy 
of man and animal. It was used fairly efficiently, 
often strenuously. I have been fortunate in 
seeing and experiencing personally much of 
what was formerly the rule, as the porterage 
of freight and supplies over the Chilcoot pass 
on men's backs, 100 pounds to the man, and 
the killing, by overwork, of 3,750 horses out 
of 3,780 in the awful strenuousness, but la- 
mentable inefficiency, of the White Pass pack 
trail in 1898. 

The discovery that we could use coal, oil, gas, 
mountain water-powers as sources of energy 
has changed all civilization. In the United 
States alone we have per inhabitant twenty 
times as much energy available as when I was 



RECORDS 221 

born. The man whose manual labor it would 
take for over 500 years to spade up a section 
of unbroken prairie land, is quite inclined to 
think that he is using his time very efficiently 
if with team and plow he breaks up 640 acres 
in four years, when in reality with suitable 
equipment, mechanical tractors and gang 
plows, it could be done in 36 hours. 

The man who would take a week carving by 
hand a small frame, might pride himself on 
turning out one frame a day with foot power, 
when in reality with moulds and automatic ma- 
chinery he could turn out one frame a minute. 

If, as I have seen, a man using a shaper over- 
runs the necessary stroke three-fold, if the 
machine's speed is only 30 per cent of what it 
ought to be with modern steels, if his feed is a 
1/64 inch instead of a 1/16, if he takes four 
cuts instead of two, then his end efficiency is 
only 1.25 per cent. Men have not yet realized 
that the ages of muscular effort are passed, 
that work can no longer be measured in man- 
power or foot-power, that we no longer want 
the man who can spade twice as much, the man 
of burden who can carry twice as much, the 
man who can break a horseshoe with his bare 
hands; but we want the man on the bridge of 



222 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

an oil-fired steamer, we want the crew of an 
oil-fired locomotive, engineer on one side with 
hand on power-moved lever, fireman on other 
side with finger on oil valve ; we want the crew 
of mechanical tractors and gang plows, each 
man directing and superintending the evolution 
of as much uncarnate energy as 2,000 mien could 
have evolved using man-incarnated energy. 

Assuming as a possibility in inefficiency of 
labor a quantity of 50 per cent, of labor dis- 
tribution of 17 per cent, of labor use of 1.25 
per cent, we have an end efficiency of 1/5 of 1 
per cent. I have seen worse happen than this, 
for sometimes the worker did nothing at all, 
at other times was busy on wholly unnecessary 
work. As a general average, efficiency of sup- 
ply of work is not over 90 per cent; efficiency 
of distribution, if fitness for the work is in- 
cluded, not over 60 per cent, and efficiency of 
use not over 70 per cent, giving an end effi- 
ciency of 37.8 per cent, shading off from this 
maximum to nothing. 

As to service, therefore, as in materials, it 
is quality that ought to be improved by paying 
a much higher price per unit. It is not more 
strenuousness that is wanted; it is more effi- 
ciency with less effort. As T goes down, W 



RECORDS 223 

must go up both relatively and directly. The 
locomotive engineer is paid higher wages than 
the Chinese coolie, and as part of his daily life 
he enjoys luxuries unknown to kings a genera- 
tion ago, still unknown to Chinamen. The 
coolie carries 150 pounds 20 miles in a day ; the 
American locomotive engineer and the fire- 
man haul 6,000 tons 60 miles a day. Piece 
rates are physiologically and equitably vicious 
and wrong. They put a premium on harmful 
strenuousness, instead of standardizing condi- 
tions and operations so that greater output will 
follow less effort, but higher efficiency per unit 
of time ; they are based on the assumption that 
output is dependent on muscular energy as it 
was in former ages, instead of being dependent 
on a steadily increasing quantity of uncarnate 
energy, combined with a steadly increasing 
quantity of incarnate energy, both directed by 
a steadily increasing intelligence. 

T cannot indefinitely decrease, neither can 
W indefinitely increase, and experimentally we 
must determine what combination of TW re- 
sults in minimum cost. 

In the diagram on page 224, the vertical lines 
A, B, C, D, E are records of different men work- 
ing on similar jobs but at different rates of 



224 



THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 







TW Should be 


a Miniroom 


























Hours 














Minimi 


m 
















T = 3-3 




10 














W = .47 






V 
















r-i 9 


s. 
















p 


\ 














•' 
,• 


4.00 T 8 




V 












• 


£ a 




v, 












• 


M M 7 




Sfl 


k 








y 




u be 






*u. 








* 




±! 3.00 H 6 






^S2& 






* 






.2 * 


^'«* 




V 


K 




*' 






5 « 5 




=2^ 




*^ 


<r"" 






O 




^A 


'Jo 












2.00 4 








^^' 














^liinP 


— — "' 












3 


Was 


































$1.00 



















.60 



II 
,50 g 

w 

M 
V 

.40 a 



A. 

TW. 
A 
B 
C 
D 



B. 
T. 

10.00 
6.85 
4.60 

3.30 
8.00 



c. 

w. 

.30 

.32 
.38 

ja 

.60 



,30 



D. B. 

Total. 
$ 3.00 
$ 2.192 

$ 1.748 

$ 1.551 Minimum 
$ 1.80 
The Engineering Magazine 



EFFICIENCY DIAGRAM SHOWING RESULTS AT VARYING COM- 
BINATIONS OF TIME USED AND WAGES PER HOUR 



speed. A, the slowest worker, takes 10 hours 
to accomplish a task. His speed is that of a 
lame man only able or willing to walk a mile 
and a half an hour. Nevertheless, although 
he may be wholly unfitted for the work and the 
work not suited to him, he has to live, has prob- 
ably a family to support, and he is unwilling to 
work for less than $0.30 an hour, and if he is 
wise, joins a union which will enforce this mini- 
mum rate. A's standard expenses probably eat 
up 90 per cent of his earnings, or $0.27 per 






RECORDS 225 

hour, his profit above expenses being $0.03 per 
hour. B is a faster worker, able to walk 2.2 
miles an hour. He is also given $0.30 an hour, 
but in view of his greater speed an extra pay- 
ment of 6.6 per cent is added, making his hourly 
rate $0.32. His living expenses, as for the 
other man, being $0.27, his net earnings or 
profits become $0.05 per hour as compared to 
$0.03. He has increased his profits 66.6 per 
cent. The man C is one who can and does walk 
at the rate of 3.3 miles an hour, a mile in 18 
minutes. This man earns $0.32 in wages and 
a bonus of 20 per cent, making his hourly earn- 
ings $0.38. His net profit above minimum liv- 
ing cost of $0.27 is $0.11 an hour, or an in- 
crease above A in net profits of 267 per cent. 
D is a man who can walk 4.5 miles an hour, or 
a mile in 13.3 minutes. This is fast walking, 
but not as fast as is regularly kept up hour 
after hour and day after day on the Yukon if 
the trail is good. 

D earns $0.15 an hour above the employer's 
basic rate of $0.32, his profit is 400 per cent 
more than that of A. This man's speed is the 
most economical both for the employer and for 
himself. A speed greater than 4.5 miles an 
hour is more than the normal man ought to 



226 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

keep up. E is an abnormally fast traveler, 
running at the rate of 5 miles an hour, the 
Yukon average. His pay rises to $0.60 an hour, 
his profit to $0.33 an hour, the profit alone 
being more than the wages earned by A or B. 
His profit is 1,000 per cent greater than that 
of A. 

E is a strenuous but not an efficient traveler. 
His work costs more than that of either D or 
C, and he will break down if he long continues 
the pace. If greater speed is wanted the 
method must be changed, not the strain in- 
creased. 

Tst W«t 
Actual service cost= - ^ B „ t B ,n w B mi w 

W must increase as E t increases, W must 
fall as E t falls. If this is not the law, then 
there is no hope ahead, and civilization, discov- 
ery, and appropriation of the energies in the 
universe are disasters. But it is the law. Let 
us illustrate by a single example. Sixty years 
ago $5 of free gold to the ton, $100 of combined 
gold to the ton, were about the lowest amounts 
that it was profitable to work. 

The average rate of wages for white men 
was low. The time efficiencies of gold produc- 
tion have been steadily improved, gravels are 



RECORDS 227 

now profitably washed that contain as little as 
$0.05 to the ton, ores are mined and smelted 
that contain as little as $5 to the ton. Gold 
production has increased from $13,500,000, the 
average before 1848, to $400,000,000 per an- 
num. White men's wages have doubled and 
250,000 men are now employed instead of 
12,500 as formerly. Those who made money 
from owning gold mines have invested it, de- 
veloping other industries, creating still further 
demand for employment. Let us assume that 
the gold producers of the world should unitedly 
demand a 2-hour day at the same wage per 
hour, instead of the present 8-hour day, on the 
supposition, firstly, that they would thus pro- 
vide work for four times as many men, and 
that a larger proportion of the output of the 
mines would go to labor. The immediate effect 
would be the closing down of nine-tenths of the 
gold mines of the world, 225,000 men would be 
thrown out of employment, other industries 
would be curtailed, still further increasing the 
supply of labor. The 2-hour provision might 
stand, but either wages would drop until low 
enough to make the reopening of the mines a 
paying proposition, or increased efficiencies 
would have to be applied to mining so as to 



228 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

increase the output fourfold per man-hour of 
work. 

More than ever before would it be necessary 
to make motion studies and time determination 
and to set up standards of supply, of distribu- 
tion, of use as to every item of work. If wages 
per hour are arbitrarily increased, the increase 
can be safely provided for by increased effi- 
ciency, and in no other way. If efficiency is 
arbitrarily increased, wages will inevitably rise, 
or effort will diminish. 

What is true of materials and personal serv- 
ice is equally true of investment charges. In- 
vestment charges, like personal service, fall 
into time for any performance and the cost per 
hour. 

I = T'R 

in which T' indicates time in hours and R cost 
per hour for capital charges. 

If all the railroads of the United States are 
worth $14,000,000,000, it is evident that the an- 
nual capital charge for interest, depreciation, 
insurance and taxes might be $1,000,000,000— 
that the actual capital charge per hour is 
$114,155. If, therefore, as a token of respect 
to the memory of a dead president, all railroads 



RECORDS 229 

should stop operations for 10 minutes at the 
time of his funeral, the cost would be about 
$20,000 in decreased efficiency of R, but the of- 
ficials would hasten to make it up by increasing 
the output of the subsequent hours, thereby 
raising the efficiency of T'. 

As for materials and for service, so also we 
must determine which T' and R in combination 
result in the least cost. 

In pay for services, the natural law is that 
an increase ought to decrease time in larger 
proportion, but in equipment it is very common 
to increase R unwisely and very greatly for a 
less decrease in T'. The same law prevails for 
equipment as for materials and labor. Addi- 
tions to equipment should decrease, not in- 
crease, costs. 

Muscular energy, whether of man or animal, 
is available only a few hours a day, 8, 10, 12. 
Uncarnate energy is available 24 hours & day. 
The machinery in paper mills, in glass plants, 
works 24 hours a day ; an ocean steamer on the 
Pacific will throb steadily for twenty days, the 
big generators at the world exposition in Chi- 
cago and in St. Louis ran for six months with- 
out a stop, big pumping machinery at mines 
will work even longer without shutdown. There 



230 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

is, therefore, double and treble investment 
charge in working equipment only 10 or 8 hours 
a day. 

This was bad enough, but there was a 
boom period after 1897 that owed its start to 
the Yukon gold discoveries, to a European crop 
failure with abundant crops here, and that was 
further stimulated by the sudden expenditure 
of one thousand million dollars in the Spanish 
war. America suddenly resolved to scrap all 
its old equipment and modernize from top to 
bottom. Every railroad rebuilt its main lines 
with new grades, easier curves, heavier rails 
and ties, rebuilt its bridges, stations and ter- 
minals, rebuilt or replaced its locomotives and 
cars, built new shops and equipped them with 
new tools. Every city rebuilt its business 
blocks and its aristocratic residence section, 
every street-car line was rebuilt and re- 
equipped. Infected by the general contagion, 
every industrial plant tried to increase its ca- 
pacity. Paper mills doubled the width of the 
paper machines, thus doubling their capacity, 
iron mills became tonnage-mad, textile mills 
increased their machines beyond the world's 
output of textile fibres. 

What are we going to do about it? There 



RECORDS 231 

are three correctives, and only three. Existing 
equipment will gradually wear out, the country 
will gradually grow, but during the period of 
readjustment those plants that are inefficient 
will be crowded to the wall and prematurely 
die. Not only are American plants subject to 
high equipment charges because running so 
few hours a day, but even for the 8 or 10 or 12 
or 24-hour day, they are over-equipped and 
much of the machinery lies inactive. 

We have again and again found that ma- 
chines were not in operation over half the time 
of a 9-hour day. When in operation they were 
inefficient. It is not so long ago that a loco- 
motive-tire lathe would be run 18, even 30 
hours, to turn up a single pair of tires, work 
that on the same machine ought not to take 
over 3 hours. 

The machine end-efficiency in some plants is 
not over 4 per cent of the guaranteed capacity. 
Eight hours out of 24 gives a work time-effi- 
ciency of 33 per cent, not running half the time 
during shop hours gives a shop time-efficiency 
of 50 per cent; many machines exceed the re- 
quirements of the work put to them, as when a 
big planer is used instead of a shaper, this form 
of efficiency dropping often to 70 per cent ; and 



232 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

finally, machines are often run so slowly as to 
show a speed efficiency of only 3.5 per cent. 
When we reflect that there are other dependent 
sequences in the material inter-relations, in the 
work, and in the machine inter-relations, that 
there are dependent sequences between ma- 
terial and labor and machine, as when unneces- 
sarily hard material lengthens the time of both 
man and machine, or when defective machine 
spoils material and wastes workers' time, or 
when unskilled man spoils material and injures 
machine — the marvel is not that industrial 
operations are so inefficient, but that, consider- 
ing the dependent sequences, they are in each 
term of the sequence so high. 

Actual investment cost 



EV E"f E m r E m, r 

It is a law that it usually pays to increase 
quality of materials, that it usually pays to in- 
crease quality of labor, that it usually pays to 
increase quality of equipment, provided ma- 
terials are efficiently used, labor efficiently 
used, equipment efficiently used. Equipment 
has hours about half those of labor when it 
ought to work as long as materials, be con- 
stantly on the job. 



RECORDS 233 

This relation of rate per hour to time is gen- 
erally lost sight of. It is because it has been 
lost sight of that over-equipment is the rule in 
America. Materials, service and equipment are 
worked up to the general cost formula : 

Total cost=Materials+Service+Investment charges. 
Total cost= QP +TW+ T'R 

Usually only the greatest of industrial man- 
agers realize that Q is more important than P ; ! 
that T is more important than W, that R is 
more important than T', and that minimum 
total cost is realized when QP is minimum, 
TW the minimum, and T'R the minimum. 

For all the operations or for any single unit 

T-^4- 1 4- 1 * Qst Pst . Tst Wst I T ! st Rst 

Total actual cost= g— ^ + — — ■ + -g— g- . 

This formula shows what records are wanted, 
namely, the six items of standard cost and the 
six or more items of corresponding efficiencies. 
No manager, no accountant, knows where he 
stands unless his records show him as to every 
operation : 

The standard quantity of material 

The efficiencies of material use 

The standard price of material unit 

The efficiency of price 



234 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

The standard quantity of time units required 
The efficiencies of time 
The standard rate of wages for work of the 
character done 

The efficiency of wage rate 
The standard quantity of time for equipment 
The efficiencies of time use of equipment 
The standard equipment rate per hour 
The efficiencies of equipment use 
The formula is equally applicable to a total- 
ized operation costing one mill, as the page of 
a periodical, or to the operation of all the rail- 
roads of the United States as one great unit. 

Records as to each detail, aggregated into 
records as to the whole, are one of the efficiency 
principles; records as to each item and every 
item today, records as to each and all items 
throughout a long period of time. He who has 
records of quantity and price — efficiencies of 
both, of every unit of material used, whether 
ton of rails or pint of oil ; who has records as 
to time and wage rate for every operation, and 
the efficiencies ; who has records as to time and 
investment charge per hour for every operation 
— he is in a position to apply the other practi- 
cal principles and thus bring actual up to ideal. 
Records of this kind are simpler, cost less to 



RECORDS 235 

keep up, than the usual industrial and cost 
records of great companies. 

Cost accounting can be very simply and easily 
developed from the cost formula. The elabora- 
tion would carry us too far from the subject of 
records, reliable, immediate, adequate and per- 
manent. 

In a periodical publication, as to each page 
there is material, personal service, equipment 
charge; and if the weekly edition runs to 
2,000,000 copies of 80 pages each, a saving of 
the one one-hundred-thousandth part of a cent 
in cost per page means $800 in a year, enough 
to leave some profit after paying the salary of 
a man whose sole duty might be to prevent this 
minute waste. 

When the formula is applied to railroad oper- 
ating cost it inevitably shows that E is low. 
We have all seen locomotive safety valves pop- 
ping and black smoke issuing from stacks. 
There is waste of fuel, but fuel is the largest 
single material item in railroad operation, 
amounting in fact to one-third of all material 
expense. We have all seen railroad day labor- 
ers dawdling over their work; but common 
labor, notoriously of poor efficiency, is the 
largest service item in railroad operation, being 



236 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

about one-eighth of the whole. We have all seen 
superfluous equipment, whole roads paralleled; 
and even if there were not an item of duplica- 
tion, is it not conceivable that with a complete 
understanding of the problems by people, by 
government and by managers, railroads might 
secure money at 4 per cent instead of 6 per 
cent, thus reducing equipment interest charges 
$280,000,000* a year? By the test of the cost 
formula we can at least analyze every item of 
expense, determine standards and efficiencies, 
and strive for waste elimination. The cost 
formula is one of the instruments wherewith 
wastes can be detected and measured ; but even 
as Kepler proved by measurement that all 
planets moved in elliptical orbits, so does the 
proper measurement of costs show where the 
savings, if made, must necessarily go. 

The savage destroys, the barbarian squan- 
ders, but the civilized man conserves. QP 
therefore measures civilization, TW measures 
civilization, and T'R measures civilization. 
There is scarcely a conceivable limit to 
quality, but quantity, natural resources, are 
limited; there is scarcely a conceivable limit 



* This item was not included in the recent estimate of a pre- 
ventable railway operating loss of $1,000,000 a day. 



RECORDS 237 

to human skill; but each individual's span of 
time is inexorably limited. Friction and clum- 
siness, duplication and waste, can be eliminated 
from equipment; but each machine's life is 
limited. As to material, shall we use radium 
or shall we use sulphur; as to equipment, shall 
we use the old round blunderbuss bullet or shall 
we use the slim modern pointed bullet which 
travels twice as fast, goes four times as far, 
and weighs half as much ; as to equipment, shall 
we use subways built with 4 per cent money 
advanced by the city, or shall we travel on slow 
surface cars drawn by horses and earning 10 
per cent? As to equipment, shall we use the 
king's couriers on the king's highway or shall 
we use the telephone over a 1,000-mile gap? 
Shall the workers idle the long days through 
and be content with yams and a gee string? 

Civilization is high when QP is low; civil- 
ization is high in which T'R is low; but 
reductions in QP, reduction in T'R must be 
balanced by increases in TW. Records, the 
instruments by which these relations are dis- 
covered and determined, are not dry and mo- 
notonous ; they are an inspiration and a guide. 

This is the final problem : — 

Shall ultimately more of us work less time 



238 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY . 

each, W remaining low, or shall we all work a 
reasonable time and greatly increase W? Hav- 
ing increased our command over materials, over 
equipment, what shall we do with the gain? I 
once heard an eloquent labor-union leader ex- 
pound his creed : "Eight hours for work, eight 
hours for play ; eight hours for sleep, and eight 
dollars a day." Eight hours for sleep — yes; 
eight hours for work — why not more or less as 
we find pleasure and delight or aversion and 
pain in it? A dollar an hour! Why not what 
we are entitled to through elimination of ma- 
terial and equipment wastes ? Eight hours for 
play? There are moments in a man's existence 
that count more than monotonous months — 
the moment when Charles the Hammer learned 
that the Saracens were in rout; the moment 
when Columbus learned that land was lifting 
to westward; the moment when Lister con- 
ceived of asepsis, when Pasteur conceived the 
germ theory. Many of the minutes of the eight 
hours for play can be expanded into moments 
worth while, through the conquest of matter 
and of time. 

Gebraucht der Zeit, sie geht so schnell von hinnen. 
Doch Ordnung lehrt Euch Zeit gewinnen! 

Goethe. 



IX 

THE SEVENTH PRINCIPLE: 
DESPATCHING 



Away with all delay! Postponement always harms 
when all is prepared. — Lucan. 



Chapter IX 

THE SEVENTH PRINCIPLE: 
DESPATCHING 

THE Eskimo counts days by sleeps, counts 
months by moons, and counts years by 
long snows. He despatches himself by 
the seasons. The Egyptians knew that days 
varied in length, that the moon was no de- 
spatcher of seasons, and that the sun was no 
despatcher of the year, so they fell back on 
Sothis, the dog-star, and based their chronology 
on the great Sothis period of 1,461 years. Our 
watches and chronometers are run on sidereal 
time. 

With our photography, with our spectro- 
scopes, we find that in one direction the stars 
are widening out, that in the opposite direction 
they are drawing together, as our solar system 
swings through space; and ultimately we 
shall fall back on the whole universe as chief 
despatcher. 

241 



242 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

If we could photograph the stars at intervals 
of a hundred years until we had five-thousand 
pictures, and then run the views on a moving- 
picture machine, all would be rapid interlacing 
motion where now there seems to be immutable 
rest. 

So much for the infinitely large; but de- 
spatching is just as much in evidence in the 
infinitely little. 

In three weeks' time, a hen's egg, if kept 
warm, will change from an albuminous and 
fatty mass into the living chick. As boys in an 
English school we secured cards of silkworm 
eggs, hatched them by the heat of our own 
bodies, carefully reared the worms, watching 
the alternate periods of voracious activity and 
sloughing numbness. We watched them spin 
their cocoons, within which they changed to 
chrysalids, to emerge later as delicately beauti- 
ful moths — unless we cut short their despatch- 
ing and despatched them our way with boiling 
water. All growth and decay are manifesta- 
tions of the principle of despatching. The 
emanations of radium, that marvelous element, 
have almost revealed to us the ultimate consti- 
tution of matter, and we now know that every 
atom is in a ferment of activity, as orderly as 



DESPATCHING 243 

and perhaps far more complicated than a solar 
system. 

The Egyptians had wrested from the stars 
their time secrets and arranged accordingly 
their dynasties, also their great Sothis month 
once in 120 years, a leap-year month ; but they 
did not know that ophthalmia is carried by 
filthy flies and that it grows in each case as 
regularly as solar cycles. So from the prehis- 
toric paleolithic age to the last decade, Egyptian 
babies have gone blind with preventable blind- 
ness. 

It is apparently easier to grasp and acquiesce 
in the large than in the small, easier to rush to 
certain death in a battle than to endure a cinder 
in the eye, but he that ruleth his spirit is better 
than he that taketh a city. 

At every hotel there are racks filled with 
railroad time-tables. These are issued by the 
ton every month and show to the minute the 
exact time during the future weeks every pas- 
senger train in the United States is scheduled 
to reach every station. These are the popular, 
abridged time-tables. For the employees there 
are time-tables much more carefully compiled, 
covering also the freight trains and giving all 
the rules of operation. 



244 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

In railroad operation marvelous despatching 
has been attained, more accurate than the sea- 
sons, more reliable than the tides, almost equal 
to the star time on which it is based. Lines of 
track nearly a thousand miles long stretch be- 
tween New York and Chicago. Every switch, 
every grade, every curve, is known ; the line is 
studded with signal towers and punctuated with 
stations. In the round house is a locomotive 
with boiler capable of carrying 225-pounds 
steam pressure, which through the cylinders 
and pistons pushes on the wheels with rims 
polished like glass. The rims transmit 400 
horse power through a quarter-inch square of 
contact with a glass-smooth rail. With one load 
of coal, drinking from tanks as it runs, the 
locomotive is able to speed 140 miles at the rate 
of 60 miles an hour. The seventy-two to 
eighty-four wheel axles under the train must 
each run true in its box, everything in track 
and equipment, in men, and above all in spirit, 
must be in perfect order all the time. On the 
basis of these conditions a schedule is made 
out, a schedule of running time, with due al- 
lowance for grades and curves and stations, an 
18-hour schedule from New York to Chicago. 
The train is then despatched. 



DESPATCHING 245 

The despatchers issue orders to the conductor 
and to the block-signal men, thus controlling 
the train from both ends. While under the 
orders of the conductor, while physically under 
the control of the engineer, it is the despatcher 
who from start to finish holds it in the hollow 
of his hand. This is the highest degree of 
despatching that has been reached in America. 
It is perfect in its way, and all Americans are 
justly proud of it, although as a marvel of 
human skill and despatching excellence it is not 
to be compared with the despatching of the 
Franco-German war by von Moltke, when over 
a million men were despatched, and empire- 
making and destroying battles were fought at 
a predetermined time and place, with prede- 
termined victory for the great despatcher, pre- 
determined defeat for his less skilled opponent. 
The big task was carried through because of 
perfect preparation. The German army had 
no track, no perfect locomotives, no built and 
tested signal towers, but it had a perfectly 
working organization that had not omitted to 
give attention to every little detail. 

In America we fail in details. We step from 
the 18-hour train and we enter a railroad shop. 
We ask, "Do you despatch your work here ?" — 



246 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

"No, this is a repair shop. We rarely do the 
same thing twice. Despatching is all very well 
for a daily train running every day in the year, 
but it would never apply in a repair shop." The 
official in charge with ill-disguised skepticism 
enquires whether the questioner is a railroad 
man, whether he understands the peculiarities 
of railroad operation. We say nothing, but we 
wonder whether a surgeon without railroad 
experience could take out a railroad man's 
appendix. Has the official fully grasped the 
fact that as to most of life facts, as to the 
fundamentals of conception, gestation, birth, 
nutrition, growth, development, he is one with 
his cousins, the other mammals ; that as to most 
of the balance he is one with his human broth- 
ers, and that even if he had the special talent 
of a Paderewski, he could not play without 
hands, nor compose if he had the toothache, nor 
appear in public barefoot? We wonder that the 
official does not see that the laws of order, of 
sequence, of rhythm, of balance, and several 
others are superior to all minor peculiarities. 
Once when I was suddenly stricken in a rail- 
road shop and was taken, distorted with pain, 
in an ambulance in my grimy, disheveled 
clothes to a railroad hospital, they thought I 



DESPATCHING 247 

was a tramp who had fallen off a brake beam, 
but neither I nor they were worried about my 
official standing as they tried to mitigate the 
sufferings of a sick man. 

To return, not to this railroad shop, but to 
the other where the doubting official is stand- 
ing, I suddenly see a man shaping a small piece 
of steel about the size of a visiting card. I do 
not know w T hat it is for, but in thirty seconds 
I notice that the moving tool is cutting air 
three inches and cutting metal one inch; effi- 
ciency of stroke is therefore about 30 per cent, 
with due allowance for clearance at each end. 
I ask the man what kind of tool steel he is 
using, and he answers "blue chip," but this 
means nothing to him, as instead of making 
blue chips his metal chips are dull gray. His 
cutting speed is about one-third of what it 
ought to be, therefore efficiency of speed is 33 
per cent. His tool is diamond-pointed and his 
feed is 1/64 inch. He should have used a 
round-nosed tool and the feed should have been 
1/16 inch, so that the efficiency of feed is 25 
per cent. His depth of cut is as thin as he can 
make it, so he takes three so-called roughing 
cuts and then a finishing cut when one deep 
roughing cut and a broad, scraping, finishing 



248 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

cut would have answered. His efficiency on 
depth of cut is not over 50 per cent. The 
time efficiency of the whole job is therefore 
30 X 33 X 25 X 50 = 1.25 per cent— but a 
little over one per cent. These are the visible 
inefficiencies. I surmise a number of others 
that I do not see. I suspect that perhaps the 
piece was not needed at all, that some worker 
or foreman is doing some unauthorized experi- 
mental work ; I suspect that the piece needs no 
such finish. I have too often seen infinitesimal 
cuts, followed by file and emery cloth, put on 
a piece that is then flung down on the rough 
floor and badly dented with no apparent inter- 
ference with its usefulness. I have seen a 
scraping tool put on locomotive tires, taking 
off tissue-paper-thin scrapings, when every- 
body who thinks a minute knows that car axles 
(a much more important surface) are often 
given a rolling finish, and that locomotive tires, 
however rough, would roll smooth before the 
engine had rolled out of the shop. I have seen 
a railroad shop man put hours of work and use 
$600 of material on a replacement when a $27 
repair would have abundantly answered the 
purpose, a man not heeding the Scripture in- 
junction not to put a patch of new cloth on an 



DESPATCHING 249 

old garment lest the garment be weaker than 
before. Why continue these painful examples ? 

The railroad that despatches its crack trains 
with 99 per cent of time accuracy has either 
no despatch system or a very crude one for 
work, either big or small, through its shops; 
therefore in some cases it fails to realize an 
efficiency of even 1 per cent, and on the big 
average of all shop work fails to realize either 
a time or cost efficiency of more than 40 per 
cent. Our universe would not last very long 
if only the stars were despatched. It is the 
despatching of our daily meals, the despatching 
work of ferments, of bacteria, of protozoa, of 
molecules and of atoms, that counts. 

A firm in Chicago has taken a million-dollar 
contract to bring out a new edition of a great 
encyclopedia. All the work is despatched. 
Conditions were standardized, operations were 
standardized, each volume, each page, each 
column, each line, each letter is despatched, 
even as the proper lubrication of each car axle 
is part of the proper despatching of the 18-hour 
train. 

Many years ago on the Yukon I said to a 
river-steamer owner: "I suppose you much 
prefer passengers to freight. If you run on a 



250 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

sand bar, the passengers can get off and help 
you to put the steamer afloat." He told me 
plainly, forcibly and picturesquely that I did 
not know what I was talking about. If a pas- 
senger boat stuck on a bar, the passengers did 
nothing but grumble and cause trouble, and the 
only way they lightened the load was by eating 
more of the food, but a load of freight would 
not complain if it not only ran on a sand bar 
but in addition was caught in the ice and re- 
mained all winter. 

Railroad despatching as to passenger trains 
is of a very high order of excellence; as to 
freight forwarding it is gradually emerging 
from the dark ages, perishable freight going 
forwards almost with passenger regularity; 
wrecks, slides, snow are taken care of with a 
despatch of the highest order of excellence; 
railroads are even built on schedule time; but 
considering the expenditures that are not 
despatched and those that are inefficiently 
despatched, the general despatching efficiency, 
even of railroads, is not over 40 per cent, yet 
there are few activities that do as well as rail- 
roads. The reasons the despatching efficiency 
is so low are many, but chief among them are 
lack of proper type of organization, and failure 



DESPATCHING 251 

to apply principles as distinguished from 
empirical makeshifts. 

Nevertheless, there are very few other activi- 
ties scheduled as far in advance and as accu- 
rately as train despatching. Newspaper offices 
furnish wonderful examples of scheduled work, 
so also do theatres, and perhaps the most won- 
derful of all are the weather reports, gathered 
over an area of four million square miles, com- 
piled, digested and distributed within a few 
hours of receipt. But most of the industrial 
plants of the world are still in the stage of 
civilization of which as to transportation the 
old freight wagons and prairie schooners 
across the plains were types. They started 
when they got ready, they arrived some time, 
and nobody knew where they were nor what 
route they were taking in between. 

There is one collection of industrial shops in 
the United States in which schedules and de- 
spatching have been so perfected that the work 
is planned ahead three months and the particu- 
lar job that each man is to do at 4 o'clock or 
any other hour for any day is known. Plan- 
ning long in advance is convenient, but is not 
an essential part of scientific despatching. A 
barber shop is scientifically despatched from 



252 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

minute to minute, and a customer entering can 
figure very closely on the time that he will be 
nble to leave. 

Railroad despatching remains, however, the 
most extended and striking example of ad- 
vance planning and daily realization. It seemed 
quite obvious, therefore, to extend these rail- 
road principles of despatching to the operations 
in a railroad shop. Railroad officials fully un- 
derstood what despatching meant, were accus- 
tomed to work under its rules. It proved, 
nevertheless, a very difficult task. In the run- 
ning of trains a very great deal precedes de- 
spatching. There is a carefully worked out 
schedule which has been more or less tried out 
for months. How many of these conditions are 
present in the industrial shop? Where are the 
standardized conditions, where are the stand- 
ardized operations? Where the discipline, the 
maintenance, the schedules? 

Railroad shops as to despatching are in the 
same backward condition as most industrial 
shops. Therefore it was found that despatch- 
ing by itself could not be immediately applied, 
that many other preparations were necessary, 
that if the application of other principles was 
worked out, despatching would become easy. 



DESPATCHING 253 

The application of principles will change a 
mob into an army, whether in field or shop. 
The frenzy of a mob shows itself in a lynching, 
but the courage of an army ought to be highest 
in defeat. When men, foremen, officials, equip- 
ment, supplies, had been subjected for a year 
to the operation of principles, a beginning was 
made of despatching locomotive repairs. The 
subject was attacked from both ends at once. 
Locomotives were worth a great deal to the 
road, a day's service being estimated at $35; 
therefore the first plan was to despatch the 
repairs as a whole, locomotives to be returned 
to service in 12 days, 18 days, 24 days, accord- 
ing to the class of repair. The second plan, 
worked in with this, was to despatch each sep- 
arate item of work and to pick out those items 
which, taken at the proper time, in the proper 
order, and in the proper sequence, would result 
in completing a locomotive in the shortest time. 

It is interesting to note in the matter of re- 
pairs the great superiority of marine-repair 
despatching over locomotive-repair despatch- 
ing. A big vessel will be put in a dry dock, at 
$5,000 a day charge perhaps, and be completely 
scraped, repainted, new propeller and rudder 
fitted, new plates inserted, in perhaps three 



254 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

days. Complete circulating pumps, from draw- 
ing to installation, will be completed in three 
days. Where individual operations are summed 
up, many of which can go on concurrently, it 
is hard to defend a longer time than 72 hours 
for most locomotive repairs. 

It is also interesting to note that in the sister 
branch of railroad maintenance, namely, track 
repairs, stupendous tasks of snow and landslide 
removals, bridge rebuilding, etc., are commonly 
accomplished in hours rather than in days or 
weeks. 

It is evident that brain must count for more 
than muscle in attempting to apply despatching 
to locomotive repairs. We had to know that 
men would be available, therefore discipline 
and the fair deal both had to be strengthened ; 
ideals of order, of promptness, of economy had 
to be instilled ; common sense had to be applied ; 
records had to be started, but other principles 
also had to be applied. Conditions of all kinds 
had to be standardized, operations had to be 
standardized, schedules had to be made out, 
and definite instructions had to be issued. It 
is really very much easier to apply a few prin- 
ciples than to remedy several million defects. 
The easiest way is to forget these defects in 



DESPATCHING 255 

the past, ignore them for the present, but con- 
stantly obviate them for the future. 

A new plan was gradually substituted for the 
old plan. In the railroad shop major schedules 
were worked out and put into effect by de- 
spatching; minor and subsidiary schedules 
were made out for each job, each man, and 
each machine, the lesser jobs fitting like parts 
of a puzzle into the larger schedules, and on 
the basis of schedules, however often they were 
changed, men, machines and jobs were de- 
spatched. All work, instead of passing directly 
from foreman to worker or to gang, passed 
through our despatch board. Practice was per- 
fectly elastic, but procedure was not. Schedules 
could be changed on a moment's notice and 
also the sequence of despatching, but not the 
fact of despatching. The particular shape and 
size and location of despatch board is unim- 
portant, the essential being that it is suited to 
the work. Whether the despatch board is cov- 
ered with parti-colored strings, or made up of 
hooks, clips, or pockets to receive cards, is also 
unimportant in principle, but not in practice, 
since a method under which many of your de- 
spatching cards blow out of the window soon 
becomes inoperative. 



256 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

The name despatching was adopted from 
train despatching, and train operation organ- 
ization was adapted. The foreman correspond- 
ed to the engineer, a new official was created 
corresponding to the despatcher, a messenger 
and telephone service kept the despatcher's 
office in touch with the work. Despatching 
records, however, were adapted from bank 
practice. The receiving teller takes in money, 
he enters the amount in the depositor's time 
book, he credits the bank's cash book with the 
amount received, but he also credits the ledger 
account of the depositor. When the depositor 
draws a check it is presented to the paying 
teller who hands out the cash, charges the cash 
account, charges the depositor's account. At 
the end of any day the total cash in hand must 
correspond with the sum of the balances in all 
the accounts. Similarly the despatching board, 
like the cash book, is filled with prospective 
work. As fast as any item is performed it is 
charged to the order. The operator is charged 
with the pay he draws and credited with the 
work he performs. 

There must be at the day's or week's or 
month's end a perfect balance between all work 
credited to operators and charged to orders, 



DESPATCHING 257 

also a perfect balance between wages and other 
accounts charged and totals credited to work in 
progress and delivered since last balance. The 
records are immediate, absolutely accurate, 
and wholly adequate. 

In practice it has proved more important to 
despatch unstandardized work than to stand- 
ardize undespatched work, even as on railroads 
it is more important to despatch trains even if 
there is no adherence to schedule than it is to 
run trains on time without despatching. 

Despatching, like other principles, is a sub- 
division of the science of management, a part 
of planning; but while visible to the eye as a 
distinct pattern, it ought, like inlaid work, to 
be intactile. If we are well nothing is more 
beautifully despatched than the food we eat, 
from plate to building up of depleted hidden 
tissue. We are conscious only of the pleasure 
of the first taste, not conscious of the admirably 
regular way by which each molecule is ulti- 
mately despatched to its destination. 



THE EIGHTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARDS 
AND SCHEDULES 



The bird is nearly a thousand times as heavy as the 
air its bulk displaces, but how inimitable is the work 
— for the way of a bird in the air remains as wonder- 
ful to us as it was to Solomon. As a child I watched 
a hawk soaring far up in the blue sky and sailing for 
a long time without any motion of its wings as though 
it needed no work to sustain it, but it was kept there 
by some miracle. I saw it sweep in a few seconds in 
its leisurely flight over a distance that to me was en- 
cumbered with every sort of obstacle which did not 
exist for it. The wall over which I had climbed, the 
ravine I had crossed, the patch of undergrowth through 
which I had pushed, all these were nothing to the bird, 
and while the road had only taken me in one direction, 
the bird's highway led everywhere and opened into 
every nook and corner. How wonderfully easy was its 
flight. There was not a flutter of its pinions as it 
swept over the fields in a motion that seemed as 
effortless as that of its shadow! — Langley. 

A perfect and just measure shalt thou have; that 
thy days may be lengthened in the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee. — Deuteronomy, 25, 15. 



Chapter X 

THE EIGHTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARDS 
AND SCHEDULES 

HUMMING birds winter in Central 
America and nest in summer in Alaska, 
yet bring up families as beautiful, as 
courageous and as achieving as themselves. 
The stormy petrel flies four hundred miles 
through the fog and strikes its burrow exactly, 
storks marked in Norway have been caught in 
South Africa, curlew and plover are supposed 
to fly at the rate of four miles a minute. 

The barn-yard fowl, if frightened, runs and 
flutters over a low fence, and panting with ex- 
haustion is soon run down. The rooster uses 
his wings to flap when he crows, the hen uses 
hers to brood her chicks, their ancestors having 
forgotten that they were birds and that the V 
limitless air was their inheritance. 

"Whoever heard of a woman tiring when she 
was having a good time, even if she had danced 

261 



262 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

all night?" said Nietzsche, and the police in 
San Francisco on March 20, 1910, on advice of 
doctors present, stopped a dance after six of 
the contestants had been dancing 15 hours and 
6 minutes. 

Prof. William James pointed out and insisted 
on the second wind, the ability that comes after 
first fatigue, after the barn-yard flutter, to en- 
dure and achieve, to fly ! 

Standards and Schedules ! These are of two 
kinds, the physical and chemical standards dis- 
covered and established in the last century, 
standards and schedules as exact as mathe- 
matics, and those other schedules resting on 
standards whose upper limit we do not yet 
know. We have our five senses. We can taste 
or smell an infinitesimal taint in food, we can 
smell the millionth part of a grain of musk, we 
can discern by touch the ten-thousandth part 
of an inch, a man heard 2,390 miles away the 
boom of the explosion of Krakatoa, we see bil- 
lions and billions of miles distant a new star 
bursting into brilliance; but there is a region 
not ten miles away about which we know less 
than we know of the nebulae, because we can- 
not reach it with our senses, nor yet with our 
physics and mathematics — a region ten miles 
or less straight down under foot. 



STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 263 

By bringing into play our instruments, our 
bolometers which measure the millionth of a 
degree of heat, our ultra-microscope which al- 
most enables us to see the atoms, one one-mil- 
lionth of a second measured on the tracing of a 
tuning fork's vibrations — by the refinements of 
physics and chemistry we can peer into the true 
inwardness of material things; so we use stop 
watches for time and motion studies of our ma- 
chines ; but when we wish to schedule work f 01 
sentient beings, then our mathematics fail and 
we fall back on experiments inspired by faith. 
Four miles a minute the flight of a little bird, 
99 per cent and more the efficiency of the fire- 
fly's flight, the sixth sense of the blinded bat, 
the sudden stop of the grizzly bear from full 
trot in darkest night when he was within a foot 
of the finest flower wire leading to a flash-light 
camera ! 

All around us, everywhere nature has been 
showing us that increased result comes from 
lessened effort, not from greater effort, but we 
have been too stupid to understand. Because it 
takes one pound of coal to produce one horse 
power, and two pounds of coal to produce two 
horse power, because it is harder to jump over a 
fence four feet high than over a fence two feet 
high, because it is more difficult to jump over a 



264 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

fence five feet high, we have non-reasoned back 
from results to effort, and concluded that effort 
should be gauged by result which is in accord 
with one set of experiences but wholly contrary 
to the larger experience. Any specific kind of 
effort, measured by results, falls from a max- 
imum to a minimum and then rises again to 
another maximum, so that there is only one 
point where maximum result is attained for 
minimum effort, a point properly scheduled at 
100 per cent. 

As to specific result it may be attained in 
many ways. Tame geese in Germany are slowly 
driven to market in September, waddling a few 
miles each day. They are prepared for the trip i 
by walking through soft, warm tar and then 
through fine gravel and sand, so that, thus shod, 
their feet may stand the weary march. Wild 
geese fly from Golofnin Bay, Alaska, to the 
tropics in less time than the tame geese waddle 
a hundred miles. The wild goose's distance and 
time schedule would be ridiculous for the tame 
goose, the latter's schedule an absurdity not less 
cruel for the wild geese. 

As to the variation in effort for similar con- 
ditions, we have but to remember that while it 
is pleasant to spend from six to twelve hours in 



STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 265 

bed, it is an affliction to spend all one's time in 
bed, a greater affliction than to have no bed and 
to snatch rest as one can on a long tramp or 
journey, for men can sleep even when walking. 
It is easy to walk three or four miles an hour ; 
it is intensely wearying to stand waiting or to 
walk two miles an hour, when shopping with 
one's wife — more wearying than the five-mile 
an hour trot of the Yukon winter trail. It is easy 
to ride a bicycle 10 to 15 miles an hour, it is 
desperately hard to ride 1 mile an hour or 20 
miles an hour, and either endeavor will send the 
rider exhausted to bed. How much more ex- 
hausting it is to breathe either fast or slow 
than to breathe naturally, the latter being abso- 
lutely effortless and kept up from birth to 
death, waking or sleeping. Natural breathing, 
natural heart beats, natural temperature, are 
100 per cent efficiency. 

This law of the reduction of effort for greater 
results crops up in the most unexpected places, 
so that engineers have evolved the definite crit- 
ical speed, the speed of maximum result for rel- 
atively least expenditure. 

In fast steamers resistance does not increase 
with the cube of the speed, but there are certain 
higher critical speeds at which resistance is 





Poder 






































s 
























KeieJ 
























King 
























£lol^ 


wsy 










6 
































s 
























Magi 


11 






























H 8 

9 




































































1/ 

































CD ° 
































8 






■ 








C3 






























cc £ 


Haul 






















t! 


Boyc 


e 




















o 


Harr 


is 




















38 














































1 

2 & 
























8 g 
1 
























1 

























Scale of Effort 
TYPICAL MAN-EFFICIENCY DIAGRAM 



STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 267 

less. Nearly 100 years ago in England a man 
running express-passenger canal boats had 
them towed by galloping horses at a speed of 
nearly 14 miles an hour, claiming this was 
easier than a slower speed. He was ridiculed 
by scientists who opposed the law of cubic in- 
crease of resistance. A bet was made, dyna- 
mometers attached, and up to 8 miles the law 
held good ; but above 8 miles the canal boat be- 
gan to climb out of the water, so that at 14 
miles the actual resistance was small. This 
was the origin of the hydroplane boat. A wise 
Kansas mare hitched to a plow, pulling heavily, 
would look back, take in the situation, and in- 
crease her speed. The plow immediately pulled 
easier because the greater speed flung the cling- 
ing earth free of the mold board, thus greatly 
lessening friction. 

Time and motion studies having been made 
as to all the work of a gang of men, both con- 
ditions and operations were standardized and 
an efficiency reward was offered. The results 
are shown in the diagram opposite. Nearly 
all the men are grouped between 80 per cent 
and 120 per cent, with the greatest density 
around 120 per cent — the region of least effort. 
The hardest worked man both physically per 



268 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

unit of time and physically per unit of result, 
was Poder, with an efficiency of 7.8 per cent. 
He was more exhausted at the month's end 
than Harris, who attained 139.2 per cent; 
Keief, King, and Clohessy were more tired at 
the day's end than Boyce and Hauf; Magill 
was as tired as Hauf. 

A casual observation of the passengers leav- 
ing the Atlantic Highland boats at the Rector 
Street pier in New York on a Monday morning 
in summer, shows conclusively that in the 
crowd, some (a very few) travel over the long 
gallery from boat to street at the rate of 6 miles 
an hour; others, quite a bunch, at the rate of 
4 miles ; but the great body travels at the rate 
of 3 miles, and there are stragglers, mothers 
with little children, old ladies of social weight, 
also lingering lovers, who travel at rates 
shrinking to 2 miles an hour. The able-bodied, 
in so far as not hindered, have an average rate 
of 4 miles; and from these observations 
of voluntary effort, we can well establish 
a walking standard of 4 miles an hour 
with disapprobation if the rate falls below 
3 miles, with special reward to those who 
reach and pass the 4-mile mark. Had we 
diagrammed these walkers on the pier, they 



STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 269 

wouJd have given us a picture similar to the 
machine-shop curve of Poder to Harris. Both 
diagram and description show that the increase 
of effort between 100 per cent and 140 per cent 
efficiency is very slight — only 25 per cent, quite 
within the limit of normal variation above the 
rational average; and it also shows how it is 
possible for a good man to deliver nearly twenty 
times as much as the incompetent man, four 
times as much as the laggards, twice as much 
as the haphazard workers. Poder, Keief, King 
and Clohessy could never become Hauf, Boyce, 
and Harris. Piece rates based on the perform- 
ance of Harris would be as ridiculous for Po- 
der as wild-geese schedules imposed on tame 
geese fattening for Michaelmas; but, without 
injustice to Keief, King, and Clohessy, the nat- 
ural Haufs, Boyces, and the Harris clan can be 
selected for their natural work and be corre- 
spondingly rewarded. 

There are places where Poder and Clohessy 
would fit, even as the tame goose, plucked for 
its feathers and prepared for the feast, shows 
100 per cent efficiency, and the thin, stringy 
wild goose is far below par. The schedule must 
fit the man and the man the schedule ; there is 
no such thing as a definite universal schedule. 



\y 



B 



Miles per Hr. 



g 



s 



► 
o 
w 

► p 

o 

3 p 



ui 
w 

§ .° 



M *• g 

Op Pa 

2 * 5 

§B§ M 

co W g: 

CD 
O 

8 



to 



W 
H 
W 

> 



H 







/' 


•H»< 


k 




















■ 


1 


n 






• 














1 


./ 




o 


• 


/ 


/• * 


V ° 








4 




/ 


o 




7 




/ ° 














7 






7 


















• 








/• 












• 




« 


/ 






| • 


o 














• 


o / 




. 


J « 










• 


a 

• 




a 


1 




p 


J» 














1 

c 


P 

c 


1 




1 

e 


• I 








►d 

o 








c 

p 


^ 

B 




1* 


• r 

1 * 








5' 




• 


5' 


2. 


1 = 




o 

CD 


J* 

•f S 








o 

CD* 




• 


5 


CD 

o 


1 p 




CD l 
CD 

o 


1 o 

r o* 
1 x 








CD 

O 

"1 




• 


CO 


a 

CO 


1 B' 

1 tfl 


O 


JO 

_ p 


s 








►d 










o 

o 


P 


p 

o 

CD 


I p 

1 ffl 








8 

CD 
0* 










w 


8 

o 


~Pi 


f ^ 

CD 
1 M 




















a 

CO 


























I 





































STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 271 

At best there is a broad schedule band (in the 
diagram, the region between 80 per cent and 
120 per cent) and the records will show clearly 
whether the men have been selected to fit the 
schedule and whether the schedule fits the man. 
Irrespective of any current wage rate, a shop 
cannot be filled with the Hauf to Harris thor- 
oughbreds for the wages that will attract the 
Poders and Clohessys. 

If all conditions were absolutely standard- 
ized, if all operations were also perfectly stand- 
ardized, piece rates might apply with reason- 
able equity and fairness to the tame geese trav- 
eling the same road in the same weather with 
the same tar-sand shoes; but what about the 
wild geese far overhead? They must have 
schedules based on other standards. 

The physiological objection to piece rates is 
that they stimulate strenuousness, increase of \ ■<■ 
effort, when what we want is a betterment of 
conditions so as to achieve greater result with 
less effort. 

In the diagrams on pages 270 and 272 the 
speeds per hour for the best athletic records 
from start up to 100 miles show the time rela- 
tions between different methods for the same 
distance. The results are tabulated as follows : 



272 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Table of Athletic Records 

One Mile One Hundred Miles 

Actual Relative Actual Relative Rela- 

speea speed speed speed tive to 

1 mile 

Amateur walking.. 9.2 100 4.8 100 52 

Amateur running.. 14. 152 5.6 117 40 

Amateur skating. . 21.8 237 14. 292 64 
Amateur bicycle 

unpaced 31.4 341 20.2 421 64 

Professional bicycle 

paced 55.3 601 35.5 740 64 

It is known that each of these men put forth 
his best efforts, and assuming the men to be 
equal in strength, endurance, skill, we become 
certain that the mere addition of skates to the 
shoes increased the speed for the same effort 
2.37 times at one mile and 2.92 times at 100 
miles; that the substitution of a bicycle for 
skates increases the speed 3.4 times at one mile, 
4.2 times at 100 miles ; and that the addition of 
a helping pacer, who in no way touches the 
rider, merely shielding him from the wind, in- 
creases the speed above walking six-fold at one 
mile, 7.4 times at 100 miles. All these records 
are of abnormal, excessive, and extreme speeds, 
but who can doubt that the relation would re- 
main the same if they were halved, thus brought 
down to high normal — 4.6 miles for walking, 
28 miles for paced bicycle? 

The time may come when aeroplanes rising 
on the wind as do the birds will glide on up- 



STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 



273 



ward currents, as also do the birds, at a rate of 
two miles a minute for a thousand miles, or 
twenty-five times as fast as the walker, yet ex- 
ert no muscular effort, using delicate instru- 
ments to feel the wind, and intelligence to guide 
the flyer. 

Other facts appear from the table and dia- 




60 80 100 

Distance Covered-Miles. 

The Engineering Magazine 

DIAGRAM SHOWING SPEEDS IN MILES PER HOUR FOR 

BEST ATHLETIC RECORDS. LONG DISTANCES. 

FOR SHORT DISTANCES SEE PAGE 270. 



274 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

gram. For the 100-mile stretch compared to 
the one-mile stretch, both bicycle and skating 
fall to only 64 per cent of the speed, but walk- 
ing and running collapse respectively to 52 and 
to 40 per cent, so the man-used and man-driven 
tools not only vastly increase the speed, but 
maintain it at a far higher proportion. At one 
mile the paced bicycle rider is only six times as 
fast as the walker, at 100 miles he is nearly 
seven and a half times as fast. 

It also appears that the trotting horse, who 
begins faster than the skater, is distanced by 
him at 24 miles, and after that steadily falls be- 
hind. The horse does not have the man's cour- 
age. The man helped only by his bicycle is 
throughout faster than the trotter, faster than 
the running horse after the third mile. 

For physical, for chemica], and for electrical 
relations we can set absolute standards: 

T746 watts. 

33,000 foot-pounds per minute 
1 horse power=*l 2,545 heat units per hour 

0.175 pounds carbon oxidized per hour ' 
1 2.64 lb. of water evaporated per hour 

Practical standards are very different — one 
pound of coal in steam engines per horse-power 
hour, 10 pounds of water evaporated per pound 
of coal instead of 15 ! 



STANDARDS AND SCHEDULES 275 

For physical standards we can measure the 
extent of the shortcomings and diligently strive 
to lessen the losses; but in making standards 
and schedules for man we must first classify our 
men, and then we must so equip them that they 
can as easily do six times, seven times — yes, 
perhaps one hundred times as much. 

Walking 9.2 miles an hour is as to normal 
walking 200 per cent efficient, not a normal 
standard for any regular work, but compared 
to the effortless glide of the aeroplane it is only 
10 per cent efficient. 

To establish rational work standards for men 
requires indeed motion and time studies of all 
operations, but it requires in addition all the 
skill of the planning manager, all the skill of 
the physician, of the humanitarian, of the phys- 
iologist, of the psychologist ; it requires infinite 
knowledge, directed, guided and restrained by 
hope, faith and compassion. 

The promise already partly fulfilled and 
clearly held out as to the future is that greater 
and greater results shall follow constantly di- 
minishing effort. 



XI 

THE NINTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARD- 
IZED CONDITIONS 



Darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the 
Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 
And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 
And ... it was good: and God divided the light 
from the darkness. 

Maximum vitality and maximum efficiency are tied 
up with each other. What makes for one makes for 
both. To learn how to attain one is to learn how to 
attain the other. — Dr. Luther Gulick. 



Chapter XI 

THE NINTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARD- 
IZED CONDITIONS 

"hitch your wagon to a star" 

THE larva, grub, or worm crawls from 
the egg and its existence is governed 
by the accident of its birth site and 
surroundings. Usually it stays where it was 
hatched, eats and grows, and it arouses neither 
enthusiasm by the interest of its life nor ad- 
miration for its beauty. It is elementally dull 
and prosaic, for it has neither standardized it- 
self to command conditions nor standardized 
conditions to suit itself. At last, having reached 
the limit of its growth, it passes into the pupa 
or chrysalid state of coma, and emerges, physi- 
cally, spiritually and mentally a different indi- 
vidual. 

Who would recognize in the purple em- 

279 



280 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

peror butterfly the caterpillar of its previous 
existence? The butterfly is as beautiful as the 
worm was repulsive, as mobile as the worm 
was slow, a creature of the sunlight and sky 
instead of the shadows and of the earth. 

The water-beetle is the lord of the elements. 
It runs on land with speed, under the water it 
is one of the quickest and most graceful of 
swimmers, and through the air it is the fastest 
of flyers; it seeks its food in the water, it 
emerges at dusk, and after dark flies toward 
the moon, or to its destruction in some electric 
light. More perfectly than any other creature 
it has standardized itself to play with and com- 
mand all the elements but fire. 

The spider, not so standardized to earth, 
water, and air, as the water-beetle, has not to 
the same degree conquered the elements. The 
beetle swims, runs, flies without effort because 
its ancestors had aspirations and early achieved 
victory. The spider works consciously, much 
as men might work. She drops from a height, 
not with wings to sustain her, but holding on to 
a thread made for the occasion, strong and 
elastic. In mid-fall she can stop, the factor of 
safety being nothing, yet I have never seen the 
silken thread break. She can regain, if she 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 281 

wishes, her exact starting point, or, reaching 
the ground, can cut loose and run. The spider 
would disdain as clumsy a suspension bridge, 
for she constructs a canopy whose outlying guy 
stays have, in proportion to her length, greater 
reach than the span of the Brooklyn Bridge, 
whose strength in proportion to construction is 
greater than that of the best steel wire. The 
balloon spider, if at all interested in human 
balloons, must despise them! She, on a calm, 
sun-lit summer day, will spin out a filament 
which, warmed by the sun rises straight into 
the air. Whether the spider, like the soaring 
birds, first locates an upward air current and 
then spins her thread, or starts an upward air 
current though the warmed molecules adhering 
to the thread I do not know; but in any case 
the filament rises, rises, until the spider knows 
it will lift her, and then loosening hold, she 
soars skyward to be swept by some upper air 
drift miles away in a few hours, her relatively 
great weight carried upward and sustained by 
a thread weighing not the hundredth part of 
what she weighs. Standardized conditions there 
must be of almost inconceivably delicate adjust- 
ment, of sunlight, of calm, of length and make 
of thread. 



282 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Both soaring birds and balloon spiders and 
many floating seeds and spores use directly the 
heat of the sun to sustain them. What bird 
ever soared at night or upward through a fog? 

There are other insects that have solved 
deeper mysteries than either the water-beetle 
or the spider. Men can run on the earth, not 
as well as the beexle ; they can swim, not as well 
as the beetle; they can glide through the air, 
not as well as the beetle; they can climb down 
or up ropes, not as readily as the spider; they 
can stretch suspension bridges not comparable 
to the canopy of the spider; they can soar in 
balloons, not as safely or as conveniently as the 
balloon spider — for these are all mechanical 
operations. But the firefly produces light by a 
chemistry of whose laws and operations we 
have no grasp. The firefly has not standardized 
itself to the daylight. It wanted light when it 
was night, not general, diffused and impersonal 
light, so it creates in the velvet darkness the 
momentary and intermittent personal flash, for 
the moment making itself the centre of the visi- 
ble universe. It not only refused to acquiesce 
in the standard light of day and darkness of 
night, but it remade the conditions of the uni- 
verse to suit itself. 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 283 

This is not all of the marvel. The firefly and 
the human both have eyes, and in these eyes 
are minute nerves which make us aware of 
light and interpret to us the shape and color 
and distance of all the outside world. 

There are, therefore, two distinct methods 
of standardizing conditions — to standardize 
ourselves so as to command the unalterable ex- 
traneous facts, earth, water, air, gravity, wave 
vibrations; to standardize the outside facts so 
that our personality becomes the pivot on which 
all else turns. With the living example of the 
beetle who commands earth, water and air, 
with the example of the firefly, which, without 
effort makes light where there was none, with 
the lesson of our own eyes which have given us 
a beginning of command of infinite space and 
time, shall we fear to attempt standardizations 
of conditions now but dimly conceivable? 

The easiest way for any individual to live his 
own life in fullest measure is either to stand- 
ardize himself to suit the environment or to 
standardize the environment to suit himself. 
The horse and other animals stay where they 
are in winter and grow thick and long fur to 
meet the rigors of the climate. The bird of 
passage changes itself not at all, but suits the 



ix 



284 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

climate to its taste by picking out the one it 
wants and going to it. Either way is an easy 
way, but man, the youngest of nature's brood, 
has attempted to satisfy great wants without 
standardizing either himself or the environ- 
ment. 

To build the Great Pyramid absorbed the 
lives of 100,000 men for 20 years, and it is the 
greatest monument of inefficiency the world 
bears because conditions of building were not 
standardized; yet the Egyptian builders had 
eyes which reached out and recognized, 
through billions of miles of empty inter- 
vening space, the groupings of the stars. 
Without sweat on our brows, nor callos- 
ities on our hands, supplementing the same hu- 
man eyes with telescope, with spectroscope and 
with camera, we tear the distant stars apart, 
we dissect them, we drag them into light out of 
the depth of darkness, we assist at their birth, 
trace their lives and predict their extinction. 
Thus, at last has man begun to make himself 
infinite and the universe small. 

In the building of the pyramids, of the Par- 
thenon, and of St. Peters, man followed a law- 
less fancy and not an efficiency need, or the 
work and time and expense would not have been 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 285 

so lavish for so small return. Man has, in fact, 
until very recently remained in the larval state. 
He put on clothes to keep out the bitter cold, 
but little further advanced than the Tierra del 
Fuegan who shifts a patch of fur between his 
naked body and the wind. He huddled over a 
fitful fire to banish the cold, and these two fee- 
ble steps upward in the adjustment of self and 
the conquest of environment were almost all. 
At best, until recently he has tried to imitate 
the beetle and the spider rather than imitate 
the firefly. He invented shoes that he might 
travel along the rough trails, he invented skates 
that he might glide over the ice, he invented 
boats and sails that water and air might carry 
him. But at last he has awakened. 

Roads were built that a barefooted multitude 
might travel in slow comfort. The distance 
from Paris to Bordeaux is 323 miles, and this 
the fastest walker once covered in 114 hours 
and 42 minutes, or at the rate of 2.8 miles an 
hour. Even after a standardized path had 
been created it took many generations before 
a bright mind evolved the idea that a revolving 
wheel would be more adapted to the road than 
alternating footsteps, so we had the roller, the 
cart, the wheelbarrow, and at last the bicycle 



286 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

was perfected; but even this last step took 
three generations. In the bicycle man still used 
the alternating swing of the legs, but he pro- 
pelled himself nearly seven times as fast, so 
that Huret made the 323 miles in 16 hours and 
45 minutes, at the rate of 19.8 miles an hour. 
But why should a man use his own efforts ? He 
cannot trill his legs as he can his fingers, and 
even if he could, the leg cannot push much 
harder than 200 pounds. He had already used 
steam to propel locomotives on their more mi- 
nutely standardized road, so he finally attached 
an explosive reciprocating engine to his road 
vehicle, an engine capable of making 1,200 
strokes a minute for each of four, eight, four- 
teen, cylinders, as compared to the 140 strokes 
of each of two legs ; an engine capable of kick- 
ing 100 pounds per square inch for as many 
inches as the piston surface has area, as against 
the man's total power of push of less than 200 
pounds. So that in his cushioned seat, with 
mere pressure of hand or foot, Gabriel, in the 
race from Paris to Madrid, made Bordeaux in 
5 hours 13 minutes, or at the rate of 62.5 miles 
an hour. In this race the automobiles were con- 
fined to the road, the road was narrow, the peo- 
ple many, so a number were killed. Why there- 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 287 

fore be bound by the limitations of a road? 
Captain Bellinger, on an aeroplane, makes the 
same trip in 5 hours 21 minutes, actual flying 
time, at a speed of 60.35 per hour. Flying speed 
will soon be 80 miles an hour and already the 
French mathematicians are pointing out that 
many of the present difficulties of flight will 
vanish at the higher speed. 

In the meantime, however, because condi- 
tions have been standardized, instead of build- 
ing pyramids nearly 500 feet high in 20 years, 
our skyscrapers go up 600, 700, 800 feet in 10 
months; we tunnel through mountains and, 
laughing at wind and wave, we send a floating 
palace, larger than St. Peters, through the 
ocean from continent to continent at the rate 
of nearly 29 miles an hour. 

The principles under which the methods and 
practices of efficiency are grouped have been 
compared to the skeleton framework of a dome. 
The ribs of the dome are the principles, but 
the first layer can be started with one part of 
each rib in place, and with filling of various de- 
vices to complete the circle. As layers are added 
the ribs rise until they come closer together and 
at last coalesce. Some ribs may be carried to 
the top, others may stop part way up, their 



288 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

burden carried by others. In this series of es- 
says each of the earlier ribs has been separate- 
ly carried to the top, so that now there is less 
space for the later principles, much of their 
duty having been transferred to the principles 
already in place. To maintain reliable, imme- 
diate and adequate records we must have stand- 
ardized conditions; to put in schedules we 
must have standardized conditions; so the 
standardizing of conditions should precede 
schedules. But unless we have already adopted 
ideal schedules, how do we know what condi- 
tions, and the extent to which they must be 
standardized? Also, unless we have ideals as 
to standards, how can we create a high sched- 
ule? 

It is perhaps because schedules and con- 
ditions react so on each other that progress is 
so disappointingly slow. We make a mean little 
schedule and meanly standardize conditions to 
suit. Francis Galton points out that the Basutos 
in Africa have the greatest difficulty in finding 
oxen fit for the f orespan. The ox who stays in 
the centre of the herd is not the one struck 
down by the lion ; so through many generations 
the independent bulls and cows have been elim- 
inated until it requires careful watching to se- 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 289 

lect, and careful training to develop, a calf ca- 
pable of walking ahead and leading the others. 

In human affairs, however, when we are on 
any schedule there are some who are not afraid 
to beat it, although the herd puts up a clamor 
that the effort is killing and should be pre- 
vented by combination. Perhaps the effort is 
temporarily killing; but ultimately some pro- 
gressive soul aspires to a yet better schedule, 
and instead of foolishly trying to beat the rec- 
ord under the old conditions, restandardizes the 
conditions and thus makes an advanced sched- 
ule easier than the former schedule. 

Records are again broken by effort, far less 
at its maximum than on the old schedule, but 
nevertheless discountenanced by the conserva- 
tives, until conditions are again restandardized 
and effort is still further diminished. Who has 
the harder time, the runner who precedes the 
cavalcade of an Oriental magnate, or the engi- 
neer of our fastest trains ? Who puts forth the 
greater effort, the peon who twelve hours a day 
carries load after load of ore in sacks on his 
back up a notched pole out of a deep Mexican 
mine, or the fireman who for two hours and a 
half between New York and Albany, calling it 
a day's work, shovels coal for the fastest train ? 



290 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

In the locomotive runs across Arizona where oil 
burners are used, even the fireman's work, 
usually so hard, has been converted into watch- 
ing the water glass, watching the smoke, and 
with his fingers turning on and off water and 
oil supply. 

The grub acquiesces in the obvious ; and until 
the last century, all but very few men acqui- 
esced in the obvious. By force of ancestral 
habit this acquiescence is still the curse of most 
of us. Our ideals, our schedules, have been and 
are too low instead of too high. The 18-hour 
trains between the two largest American cities 
are on the highest regular long-distance sched- 
ules thus far attained; but on an open speed- 
way not comparable to the steel track in 
smoothness, an automobile with its little engine, 
and one man guiding, ran faster and longer, so 
that in comparison 18 hours seems slow; and, 
quite surely somewhere, some time — perhaps in 
China or Africa — Brennan's gyroscope car on a 
monorail, indifferent to both grades and curves, 
shortening distances one-fifth, will do in 8 
hours what now takes 18. 

In planning for standardized conditions, it is 
difficult not to skip the present and plan for the 
future; but even in the greatest American 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 29] 

plants, the conditions imposed by an ignorant 
and inefficient past are accepted, schedules are 
toned down, and painful effort crowds out in- 
telligent control. In one large plant where the 
heaviest and slowest piece took only 40 days for 
completion, the managers acquiesced for many 
years in a 9-month schedule, and after much 
special work felt pride instead of humiliation 
in a 6-month schedule. A 15-day schedule for 
general repairs to a locomotive is considered 
fast time and the average is more nearly 30, 
but if the time for each item is separately en- 
tered in a summary, it is hard to discover why 
3 days would not be enough. 

The battleship "Kansas" of the American 
Navy under an eminent efficiency commander 
went into dry-dock, water was pumped out of 
the dock, hull cleaned, scraped, painted, rudder 
post repacked, and the vessel floated again in 
less than 24 hours. For a steamer immediate 
repairs are otherwise important than for an 
isolated locomotive. The railroads, on the other 
hand, show marvelous speed, generally of the 
main-strength order, in clearing away a wreck 
or an earth slide or opening a snow blockade. 

If a large publishing house could have freed 
itself from its own entangling traditions, it 



292 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

could have added a million dollars a year to its 
net income. The organization was tried out on 
some insignificant minor matters; it hesitated 
and balked and trembled for six months over 
what elsewhere was put into operation in six 
days and could go into operation in six hours, 
so the larger plans were not even submitted to 
it. A great superintendent of another plant had 
uncontrollable fear of boats of any kind; an- 
other large and successful manufacturer had 
fear of the subway in New York and could not 
be induced to go below ground. Similar fears 
overcome occasionally even the most wideawake 
men, and often the main obstacles in the path 
of progression are not the real and tangible 
difficulties, but the imaginary specters that ter- 
rorize and paralyze some part of the soul. 

Ideals of standardized conditions are not 
Utopian, but are immediately and intensely 
practical, but ideals must precede selective ac- 
tion. The Greek sculptors in their studies took 
a hand from one, a foot from another, the torso 
from a third, the face and head from others, 
and aggregated them all into an ideal ; but this 
ideal existed in the mind or the sculptor could 
not have selected. 



STANDARDIZED CONDITIONS 293 

Who can tell why one hand is beautiful and 
another not, why one curve is pleasing and an- 
other disturbing? We recognize some forms 
of beauty as unerringly and without previous 
personal or race experience as we recognize 
that one note harmonizes with another. 

It is far easier to demonstrate and to prove 
experimentally the value of standardized condi- 
tions than it is to prove beauty, especially for 
the small advances that are immediately possi- 
ble, because all these advances are in successful 
operation somewhere; but often it is easier to 
break away from all traditions, to put the eye 
in the point of the needle, to load the gun from 
the breech, to write with both hands, to photo- 
graph instead of drawing, to make half-tones 
instead of engravings, to pick cotton by a whirl- 
ing serrated pencil instead of with fingers, to 
turn over 640 acres of land with gang plows 
hitched behind mechanical tractors, than it is to 
improve on the old way. 

The artist must have aesthetic ideals, the mu- 
sicians, musical ideals ; but the man who would 
bring about standardized conditions, either in 
himself or in his surroundings, must have con- 
ceptions of time, of effort, of cost; he must in- 



294 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

stinctively recognize that for each operation 
there is one combination of these three that is 
best for the ideal result. That ideal result may 
be an embroidered scarf which the lady with 
unlimited time, simple materials, and graceful, 
soothing effort has wrought. The ideal result 
may be the destruction of an enemy's battle- 
ship, twelve million dollars sunk in five min- 
utes, by guns loaded, accurately aimed, and fired 
so as to hit, at the rate of two salvos a minute. 
Time minimum at whatever cost and effort ! 

In our individual lives, in our shops, in our 
nation, what are we trying to accomplish ? Are 
we taking too much time, is it costing too much, 
are we squandering our strength? Are we 
standardizing conditions so that time will not be 
wasted, so that money will not be thrown away, 
so that effort will not be in vain? 



XII 

THE TENTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARD- 
IZE!; OPERATIONS 






Method goes far to prevent trouble in business; for 
it makes the task easy, hinders confusion, saves 
abundance of time and. instructs those who have busi- 
ness depending what to do and what to hope. — William 
Penn. 



Chapter XII 

THE TENTH PRINCIPLE: STANDARD- 
IZED OPERATIONS 

44 T TE talked to me for ten minutes, out- 
lined enough work for ten years, 
and expected it to be completed 
in ten days." This is the concise summing up of 
an interview between an efficient worker and 
his employer. It is so easy to perceive short- 
comings, so easy to plan work, so hard to real- 
ize that endless activity through endless time is 
the price of perfection. The hopefulness of hu- 
manity is not a recent development. 

Moses came down into camp with his tables 
of stone and the ten commandments. It took 
one minute and fifty seconds to read them slow- 
ly and impressively. Moses expected that the 
tribes assembled would listen, practice, and 
become perfect before they reached the Prom- 
ised Land. Thirty-five hundred years have 
elapsed and the breach of most of the com- 

297 



298 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

mandments is still very popular. It is because 
the virtues extolled are not obvious, or instinc- 
tive, that they have to be graven on stone, that 
they have to be repeated weekly if not daily, 
that they have to be incorporated in our codes 
and enforced by our courts. Nature has ultimate 
ideals, but nature's creatures are not habitually 
idealists, reverent, kindly, clean, chaste, or 
honest. Ideals are so obscure that most of us 
do not know what ideals we hold. The warrior 
still holds an exalted and honorable position, 
not on account of his heroic courage, but on 
account of the potential carnage. The corners 
engineered in Wall Street, the ebb outward of 
enhanced securities, the flow inward of the 
same securities artificially depreciated, consti- 
tute a tolerated and even admired phase of 
modern business ; and so it goes. Two minutes 
for orders — a life time, an aeon, for realization ! 
Can we wonder, therefore, that industrial 
operations are unstandardized — that the Moses 
who should lead the mob out of the wilderness 
flounders around for forty years, never arrives 
at all, and (if biblical accounts are correct) left 
as villainous a band of marauders, of Apaches, 
as ever existed to fall on the cities of Canaan ? 
If this were all that the very great and extraor- 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 299 

dinary actual leader Moses could accomplish, 
need we wonder that the ordinary shop man- 
agers are not more successful? 

We begin indeed with ideals ; we expect end 
results; we leap over the intervening stations 
of the preceding nine principles, much as if we 
expected a train to run from New York to San 
Francisco with one helping of coal, water, 
lubrication, with one train crew. The rope is 
made of many minor strands ; these are twisted 
from the numerous threads, and these in turn 
have been spun from broken and carded fibres. 
The sheep's fleece is a unit, a matted mass that 
adheres and forms a whole, not because it is 
woven like a blanket, but because of its inter- 
woven confusion and tangle. There is no popu- 
lar English word for a single thread of wool. 
Pull one lock and the whole fleece comes, not 
because of orderly connection, but because of 
disorderly tangle. 

The march of a regiment is one thing, the 
surge of the crowd that jostles and sways us 
and upsets all orderly progress is another 
thing. The sheep is a silly creature, the only 
animal that would perish without the care of 
man, so no wonder its fleece is such a mess. 
The matted, tangled hair of some savages, hair 



300 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

plastered with mud, is comparable to the fleece, 
but civilized man settles the problem by clip- 
ping his head hair so that it could not tangle 
if it tried, settles his face hair by shaving off 
every vestige of it three to six times a week; 
but woman, more patient, with more capacity 
for taking pains, brushes and combs out her 
long locks, beginning at the ends, straightening 
a few inches at a time, then reaching higher 
up, rearranging all the parts already perfected, 
and so back to the head, until each of the 40,000 
separate hairs lies in its own appointed place 
as to all the others, and all contribute to the 
marvelous and intricate creations that as a 
whole crown her lovely head. If it were not 
for the ideal plan the task would be hopeless. 
At least once a day does woman adjust her 
hair, the 40,000 single hairs to the general plan, 
and once a day should the 40,000 operations 
of the shop be straightened out in accordance 
with a general plan. 

A comprehensive shop plan, graphically ex- 
pressed, looks like a flattened tree. Each leaf, 
the separate operations, must be in order in its 
appointed place; each twig, with its own 
definite length, must reach in sequence into the 
main branches, these in turn being distributed 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 301 

at determined intervals along the main stem 
and trunk. 

The trunk grows upwards and outwards, 
from the force implanted in the seed, the 
original ideal of the tree, but there is a reverse 
flow of imprisoned sunlight and captured car- 
bon from the leaves back into the roots. The 
separate operations in a shop must flow into 
the final output ; but from the expected output 
backward, there must be a plan that reaches 
back to each detail of every operation. 

It is one thing to build a battleship taking 
up details as they occur — the haphazard meth- 
od ; it is another thing to make the plan first, 
place all the details where they belong in time, 
space, relation and perfection, and have them 
drop into place with the accuracy of a watch 
movement — the difference, in fact, between the 
running of sand through an unstandardized 
aperture, and the precision of the chronometer. 
Good results are not achieved by chance. 

If we throw four dice with the hope of turn- 
ing up four aces, we find that the chances are 
enormously against us. I learned this practi- 
cally by costly experience and then figured it 
out mathematically. At a German country fair 
the fakirs had a disk divided into twenty-two 



302 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

sections, alternately white and red. The sec- 
tions carried numbers from 4 to 24. There 
were two red sections with the number 14. The 
cost per throw of four dice was ten cents, but 
every white section was a prize winner ; all the 
reds were losers. This looked fair, an even 
chance, except for the extra red 14, and as I 
gazed I perceived that the prizes were large, 
running from twenty-five cents to ten dollars. 
All I could possibly risk was ten cents; every 
other section was a prize winner and I might 
win ten dollars. I threw the dice again and 
again, but somehow or other the numbers I 
threw came between 9 and 19, and these were 
all red numbers, not anything as low as 8 or 
as high as 20, the lowest of the prizes. I lost 
the whole of the dollar that had been saved up 
for the day's enjoyment, for the miniature rail- 
road, for the circus, for the other thrillers, and 
then I invoked mathematics. All the possible 
different throws of four dice are 1,296. There 
is one chance in 1,296 of throwing four aces, 
of throwing four sixes ; there are four chances 
of throwing 5 or 23. There are one hundred 
and forty-six chances of throwing 14. The 
chances for the white numbers were 146, for 
the red numbers, 1,156, The chances against 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 30 



r> 



me were more than eight to one. The profes- 
sional gambler wisely loads his dice so they 
will throw aces and sixes or at least come high. 
In the industrial operation the chance of the 
desired combination coming out of itself is just 
about the chance of throwing four aces. 

We must imitate the professional gambler, 
and either select those combinations that will I 
give us the inevitable advantage — that is, plan 
a board to suit — or we must load the dice so as 
to offset the chances against us. 

There is only one game of chess. There is 
the board, standardized as to size, 15 to 16 
inches square, just 64 squares, 32 pieces, each 
with its definite rights of movement. It looks 
like a very limited and standardized condition, (/* 
yet possibilities of operation are so infinite that 
if all the inhabitants of the world played chess 
continually from now until the end of time, 
they could not exhaust all the variations, thus 
experimentally determining which was the best 
possible game, that one in which each player 
makes the best possible attacking and resistant 
moves, yet the total number of squares traveled 
is a minimum. It might be a long drawn-out 
game and it might be a short one — who knows, 
how shall we ever know? If, therefore, there 



304 TFS PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

is such infinite variety and possibility in chess, 
which has been played for centuries, how can 
we expect shop operations to standardize them- 
selves ? 

I have before me one volume of the standard- 
practice instructions covering the manufactur- 
ing of the gasoline automobile truck car. It 
contains 278 isometric designs or illustrations, 
314 pages of printed matter, and spaces for 
the times and rates of 1,231 distinct operations. 
Each one of these operations was preceded by 
many designs until one was accepted as ap- 
proximately good. The design was split up 
into its component parts, investigation made 
as to material of each piece, how strong it 
should be, what heat treatment should be given, 
on what machines it should be shaped, in what 
sequence, by which worker. As to each piece 
and operation many time studies are made, and 
finally from the mass of accurately ascertained 
or available information, a carefully pre-studied 
work-instruction card is made out. All these 
items of planning must precede the time and 
cost ratings. Are you appalled at the mass of 
detail that precedes the making of a book? If 
we have but 100 copies to print it is cheaper, 
quicker, and better than manuscript duplica- 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 305 

tion; if we have 3 copies to make it is better 
to choose the typewriter and provide carbon 
manifolds than to write it out by hand. If we 
want only 300 screws and it takes 3 hours to 
set up the automatic machine and only 3 min- 
utes to run out the screws, it is better to use 
the automatic. A modern activity, whether the 
operation of an industrial shop, or a railroad, 
or of the turrets and guns of a battleship, is 
part of a gigantic, automatic machine; and it 1 
pays to plan in advance, not to trust to the hap- 
hazard. 

Given the head of hair combed from child- 
hood, never matted with clay ; the head of hair 
to which daily the habit of neatness, great 
skill, and unrelenting care is applied — and the I 
problem is solved. Given any activity in which 
planning has been incorporated as a habit, and 
apparent difficulties fade away before patience 
and persistence. 

Nevertheless, the difficulties are very real 
and there is a middle ground between the op- 
timism that underrates them and the despair 
that refuses to master them. There are be- 
tween 8,000 and 16,000 separate pieces in a 
locomotive, and each railroad in the country 
wants a different design. One great railroad 



306 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

used 256 different styles of locomotives, so 
that there is an appalling lack of standards; 
but the more reason for beginning at once. 

Modern watches are marvels of intricate and 
perfect construction. Any child can push a 
stick in the ground and by the position and 
length of the shadow determine approximately 
the time. A clepsydra or water clock, an hour 
glass, physical material leaking away at a uni- 
form rate, was a decided advance at guessing 
on the time in the dark, or the time for boiling 
an egg. The early clocks with their pendulum 
escapements required many months of experi- 
mental test before length of pendulum, mesh- 
ing of wheels, amount of weight, were adjusted 
to one another. There are as many different 
kinds of watches and clocks as there are loco- 
motives; but each is perfect with a perfection 
so great as to be almost inconceivable. The 
jewelled bearings, the almost microscopic yet 
mathematically perfectly shaped teeth of the 
wheels, the hair spring, the balance wheel, each 
is perfect in itself, perfectly related to the 
others, until the whole is also perfect. This 
is not all. Delicate, automatic machines are 
made which turn out these perfected parts so 
exactly alike as to be interchangeable. Turret 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 307 

lathes and screw machines, automatic machines 
in general, were earliest adapted to clock and 
watch making, and from that extended to 
larger and heavier parts, often beyond the 
point of economy; for in watch screws the 
material, even if of gold, would not amount to 
very much, the perfection of finish being all- 
important, but as the weight of material grows 
with the cube of its linear measurement, we 
cannot afford to make on automatic machines 
crank-pins or even knuckle-pins for locomo- 
tives, it being too expensive to cut down the 
solid bar. 

It would take no more thought and work to 
standardize operations for building a locomo- 
tive than for building a watch. The difference 
is that watches are turned out by the hundred 
thousands and locomotives only by the thou- 
sand; but this difference is not as great as it 
seems, for a watch movement may average $5 
in value and a locomotive $15,000, so that one 
locomotive corresponds to 3,000 watches, and 
as we have not hesitated to undertake the work 
of designing each separate locomotive part, we 
need not fear the labor of standardizing the 
operation of manufacture for each separate 
locomotive part. 



308 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Another instance of standardized operation 
is the printing of a book. The old writers were 
individualists; there was no standardized 
operation. Each made not only the size of the 
letters to suit himself, but also their forms, 
took pride in not being like other scribes ; each 
spelled the words his own way, each used his 
stylus or brush as he preferred, preparing his 
own ink, his own papyrus or parchment. Now 
we buy half a dozen newspapers a day for a 
cent each, we buy a dozen magazines a week 
for ten cents each, we buy a hundred books a 
year for a dollar or two each. Scarcely any two 
books are alike; there is far greater variation 
than in locomotives or watches ; but each book 
is made up and printed with standardized 
spelling, standardized lines, standardized pages 
and standardized signatures ; even the book it- 
self approaches a standard in size. The ink is 
made to suit various fluctuations in the 
weather, the paper is made to suit the quality 
of the book in press. While printing is as yet 
standardized in a rudimentary way only, while 
it affords a field as large as any manufacturing 
business in the country, it has nevertheless in 
certain limited directions standardized opera- 
tion to an advanced extent. 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 309 

In the watch, in the book, we have the stand- 
ardized operation as to the manner in which 
it shall be carried out; but there is another 
element — that of individual skill. 

Two men may both show a model wall of 
brick, yet one man may have laid 3,000 bricks 
a day, the other man only 300. 

"So true it is that one man and one intellect 
properly qualified for the particular undertak- 
ing is a host in itself and of extraordinary effi- 
ciency." Thus wrote Polybius, 212 B. C, in 
describing the work of that great engineer 
Archimedes, who, by his individual genius, 
flung rocks from catapults at the approaching 
besieging ships, who constructed cranes that 
let down grab hooks, lifted the ships out of the 
water, and turning them over, let them fall to 
destruction. 

Horses have trotted and trotted well for 
many centuries, but it remained for Americans 
to figure out that the value of a minute might 
be rated at $3,000,000, and that to eliminate 
the minute, to evolve the mile-in-two-minute 
horse from the mile-in-three-minute horse 
would be worth this amount. Prizes were offered 
to crack trotters for beating their own record, 
$10,000 for the fifth of a second, and there are 



310 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

300 fifths in a single minute. It was not only 
the horse that was developed; it was also the 
American stop-watch spirit, so that our fire 
fighters, whose every movement for men and 
teams has been standardized, are able to charge 
across the threshold of their firehouse 20 sec- 
onds after the gong has sounded. Less than 
the fifth of a second is said to cover the advan- 
tage of a runner to first base in modern base- 
ball. 

At an international contest in Berlin several 
years ago it took the English team over two 
minutes and the German team over eight min- 
utes to make a start. 

Now aeroplanes have come ; and at the inter- 
national meet in Belmont, true to our national 
virtues and our national faults, we were pre- 
pared to time the flights to the hundredth part 
of a second, but with a year's warning we had 
no machines wherewith to fly and we lost to 
the foreigners because we were unprepared. 

Probably the most marvelous and valuable 
example of standardized operations anywhere 
in the world is on our American fleets in battle 
practice. The art of war has not changed as 
to its fundamentals since men first began to 
fight on land or sea. The purpose is with a 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 311 

stronger force to overwhelm a weaker opposing 
fleet, to strike first, hardest and quickest It 
was Goliath's idea to pick off the Israelites one 
by one, and a modern pugilist could defeat a 
hundred men if they charged him singly, and 
he could down the first before the second came 
up. A Dreadnaught makes all the navies of 
the world without Dreadnaughts obsolete, be- 
cause such a battleship with its ten 12-inch 
guns, can fire a broadside from all of them at 
once while steaming at 21 knots. 

Such a battleship, steaming as fast as any 
rivals, bringing more guns into action than any 
rival, hitting an enemy at seven miles, could 
destroy the whole of an opposing fleet one by 
one, even as the pugilist would take the lighter 
weights one by one. But the horse-trotting, 
fire-fighting American stop-watch practice is 
also in the Navy, and it was realized that if 
these big guns could be fired four times as fast, 
it would be very nearly the same as having 
four times as many guns or four times as many 
Dreadnaughts, and also that if the skill of aim 
could be increased four-fold, if four shots 
would reach the target as compared to one in 
the older practice, one modern Arkansas or 
Wyoming, with twelve 12-inch guns, firing four 



312 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

times as fast and hitting four times as often, 
will, for the time being at least, be sixteen 
times as effective. These big guns are loaded, 
aimed, and fired twice in a minute. The prac- 
tice drill is only half this time, and this prac- 
tice drill is of two kinds. There is the physical 
act of loading the heavy gun, there is the more 
important act of pointing it. Two opposing 
ships are 10,000 yards apart (about 6 miles) 
steaming at 18 knots in diverging directions. 
The rate of change of range may be 750 yards 
a minute. If the range is set for every 50 
yards, it must be redetermined every 4 seconds. 
This is impossible, but it can be determined 
every 30 seconds and a salvo be fired every 30 
seconds. Being able to determine the range 
twice a minute, to fire twice a minute, the re- 
maining part is drill in pointing or aiming, and 
this is done by means of much practice with 
models. To hit a target 60 feet wide and 30 
feet high at 30,000 feet with a big gun, when 
you can cover it twice over by the point of a 
lead pencil at arm's length, is considerably 
harder than to hit a target 1 inch high at 83 
feet with a small gun ; but it is much "better and 
much cheaper to fire 1,000 shots with the small 
gun than to fire the big gun once, and when the 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 313 

big gun is fired four times in practice, after 
training with small apparatus, it will do better 
than if firing 100 real shots without the model 
practice. 

In the battle practice I saw the first 12-inch 
range-finding shot, from a distance of 14,000 
yards, go clean through a 30 by 60 target ; and 
so accurate and secure was the aim of all the 
salvos that we calmly watched the shots splash 
all around the floating target only 400 yards 
away. The firing end was not less impressive. 
The team work was so perfect that the salvos 
from the same ship were redirected one after 
the other almost with the ease with which a 
child swings a garden hose. 

I have also watched diminutive and juvenile 
Igorot savages shoot dimes from a forked stick 
at 60 feet with bow and arrow. The Igorots 
show us the beginnings of offensive skill ; mod- 
ern American battleship target practice shows 
us the highest speed, accuracy, and distance yet 
attained, and we may not doubt that our pres- 
ent achievement is but a step in man's ultimate 
achievement. 

The improvement in the effectiveness of the 
different ships of the Navy in the last five 
years is very great, and is probably the great- 






314 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

est improvement both in importance and mag- 
nitude that has ever been accomplished. Think 
of the small degree to which the steam turbine 
is superior to the reciprocating engine (a ques- 
tionable 5 per cent), or how very little faster 
the best passenger trains are than the slowest 
of the same class (about 25 per cent). Think 
of the enormous expense in time and money 
spent in developing either steam turbines or 
high-speed trains — then think of the sixteen- 
fold increased efficiency of our battleships as 
compared to five years ago, an increased effi- 
ciency due to the application of the principles 
of efficiency — all of them — Ideals, Common 
Sense, Competent Counsel, Discipline, the Fair 
Deal, Reliable and Imediate Records, Schedules 
(of 10,000 yards), Despatching (of big shot at 
the rate of ten or twelve a minute) , Standard- 
ized Conditions, Standardized Operation (se- 
cured by constant and assiduous team drill), 
most minute Standard-Practice Instructions 
(as to how fifths of seconds can be saved 
in time) ; finally, a joyful and much coveted 
Efficiency Reward, in both honor and emol- 
ument, when the tremendous results have 
been accomplished. And when this appears not 
only in the spectacular gunnery, but also in the 



STANDARDIZED OPERATIONS 315 

I 

more prosaic but continuously important opera- 
tions of firing coal; of coaling ship (the record 
as to this having increased from 30 tons an 
hour to 360 tons an hour on some of the ships 
for the whole cruise around the world) ; of 
the maintenance of operation of machinery on 
board ship without going to Navy yards — these 
accomplishments show that high efficiency re- 
quires neither great outlay nor protracted 
tim*, but only the proper intelligence, spirit, 
anc^ organization. The seagoing form of or- 
gan nation is admirably adapted to apply the 
priiidples, since a gun drill, a coal drill, a re- 
coaling drill, is but a practical and modern 
form of drill. The ideal is not a mere dress 
parade, but to hit accurately, fast, and furi- 
ously, at the greatest distance, an enemy's ship 
overtaken by better management throughout; 
and this ideal has been accomplished, stop 
watch in hand refining all the conditions and 
operations, this refinement made possible by 
bringing to bear all the available knowledge in L^ 
the universe. This Navy work is a great game, 
not drudgery; it is pleasurable excitement and 
joyously hard work. 

Thus gradually, from all sides — from the 
watch and sewing-machine and typewriter fac- 



316 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

tory, from the race-track, from the fire-fighters, 
from the manipulation of the big 12-inch guns, 
from schedules, despatching, standardized con- 
ditions and standardized operation in some 
shops — the methods of efficiency are spreading. 

Planning pays; the application of all the 
principles of efficiency pays; but standardized 
operation is the principle that most appeals to 
the individuality of the man, of the worker. 
Ideals are passive, common-sense is passive, 
planning in all its phases is passive, but stand- 
ardized operation becomes an individual joy 
with its wealth of active manifestation. 

Let none hesitate because we cannot stand- 
ardize each new operation. We cannot stand- 
ardize every errand boy's every trip ; we cannot 
standardize every naval battle; but we can so 
inspire both errand boy and admiral that each 
will always do his best, we can give them train- 
ing, knowledge, help, and incentive; and if we 
do this for them and for all other workers, 
even though we cannot drill and redrill as to 
the performance of the occasional operation, 
we can be absolutely sure that no savable time 
will be wasted nor effort lost in performing it. 



XIII 

THE ELEVENTH PRINCIPLE: WRITTEN 

STANDARD-PRACTICE IN 

STRUCTIONS 



Now hearken unto the statutes which I teach you, 
to do them, that ye may live. Ye shall not add unto 
the words, neither shall ye diminish aught from it. 
— Deuteronomy y 4, 1-2. 



Chapter XIII 

THE ELEVENTH PRINCIPLE: WRITTEN 
STANDARD-PRACTICE IN- 
STRUCTIONS 

THE human race is old and its upward 
progress slow; how old, no one knows. 
French, Italian, Spanish speech are de- 
scended from Latin dialects already differen- 
tiated twenty-four hundred years ago, yet the 
modern languages are so much alike that the 
educated foreigner, having learned to read one, 
can forthwith read and understand the other. 
Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, Irish, German, Russian, 
although developed from a common language, 
are so very far apart that it may easily have 
taken fifty-thousand years for their divergence. 
How far back beyond this time were the black, 
red, and white races one, how much further 
back when homo sapiens branched off? Egypt 
is historically the oldest nation, yet the begin- 
nings of Egypt were on geologically the most 

319 



320 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

recent of ground, the river bottom and delta of 
the Nile. Two hundred and fifty thousand 
years to bring about the difference between 
man and an ancestral being probably as intelli- 
gent as a chimpanzee ! Counting three genera- 
tions to a century, the human race has behind 
it 7,500 generations, and astonishingly little 
advance per generation to show. 

The upward progress of man has been doubly 
hindered. Compared to animals, birds and, 
above all, insects, his brain cells mature very 
slowly. A dog two years old knows far more 
than a child of five, and a five-year-old dog 
usually has more wisdom than a man of 
twenty-five. The silkworm, the spider, the 
firefly, the bee, and the ant develop marvelous 
skill in a few weeks. The progress of insects 
is therefore due partly to the rapid succession 
of generations, a cause Darwin pointed out, 
and partly to the rapidity of mental processes 
in each short life. Man has intelligence, but 
it works with distressing slowness, and each 
generation has failed to transmit more than a 
very small part of the advance to its successor. 

Rapid progress can be made in a generation. 
The child is born a rank animal, it is a savage 
until its fifth year, a barbarian more or less 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 321 

until maturity, yet ripens and mellows into a 
civilized being. When one considers medical 
students with their disreputable pranks and 
practices, one wonders where the comforting 
and respectable family physicians come from! 
It actually takes only thirty years to pass from 
animalism to semi-divinity, yet the race, after 
7,500 times 33 years, is still far below this 
standard. ■ Why has progress been so exceed- 
ingly slow? There have been high ideals in the 
past ; there have been leaders of great common- 
sense, from the seven wise men of Greece to 
Franklin; there have been competent counsel- 
lors, the sages, seers and prophets, the sibyls 
and saints of all ages ; there has been discipline, 
even severe, cruel, exterminating; there has 
been the fair deal taught by the Buddha and 
by the Christ, by the St. Vincent de Pauls, by 
the Elizabeth Frys, and by the Florence Night- 
ingales; there have been records graven in 
stone; there have been plans, schedules and 
despatching; conditions and operations here 
and there down through the ages have been 
standardized — but all this has been spasmodic ; 
little, so little has endured! There was no 
ratchet, the tide rose and fell, the children 
repeated the mistakes of their fathers; those 



322 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

full of years and wisdom became dust, and took 
their knowledge with them. We failed to hold 
as a genus or as a race what each individual 
had learned. Within the last five-thousand 
years there has been progress. The art of 
drawing, of carving imperishably, has trans- 
mitted a little of what our ancestors achieved 
and knew. More often, inspired with vanity, 
these great ones commemorated their own mis- 
deeds. Knowledge was the carefully guarded 
secret of the priestly caste, but in the finally 
published sacred books, our own and other 
Bibles, we do find moral and practical wisdom 
written and transmitted. Printing, less than 
five-hundred years old, has been called the art 
preservative of all arts. That, of course, de- 
pends. Most of our daily papers and most of 
our books embody and preserve nothing of per- 
manent value ; they are merely an extension of 
the babel of Bander log, they are merely 
printed simian chatterings, but nevertheless 
printing has given us the possibility of creating 
an eleventh edition of the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica. 

Pumpelly tells a story of a Japanese student 
of metallurgy, who about 1870 possessed an 
English work on blast furnaces, an English- 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 323 

Dutch dictionary, and a Dutch-Japanese dic- 
tionary, and with these as guides he construct- 
ed and operated a fairly successful blast fur- 
nace for smelting iron ore. This shows what 
can be done by Standard Permanent Written 
Instructions. 

We have no accurate description of the 
engines of destruction invented by Archi- 
medes for the defense of Syracuse against the 
Romans. They must have been interesting 
since they lifted whole ships and dropped them 
endwise into the sea or onto the rocks. 

It would seem as if maps and charts would 
be an easy task. A stranger on an unknown 
coast, in an unknown land, an unknown city, 
knows more about it if he has a good chart 
or map than the native. 

I have insisted that a map of Boston shall 
be properly oriented and displayed in our Bos- 
ton office, for, excepting professional criminals 
who have to be versed in devious paths and 
ways, there is probably no modern Boston 
native who could readily and accurately lay a 
rational course from point to point in that city. 
Roaming and navigating savages who really 
need maps are very skilful in drawing them. 
Sir Edward Parry discovered Hecla Strait 



324 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

from a map drawn off-hand for him by an 
Eskimo woman; but the higher the civilization 
of the map-maker, the more in the past he sub- 
stituted imagination and arts for facts. There 
are Egyptian maps dating from 1400 B. C, but 
in spite of this long history it has been aston- 
ishingly difficult to make progress in charts 
until very recent times. Errors are perpetu- 
ated, truth is forgotten, advance is slow. As 
late as 1900, charts of the Alaskan coast issued 
by the United States were said to be thirty 
miles wrong, and nearly all commercial map 
makers still represent mountain chains as cater- 
pillars, and the fringe of the shore is adorned 
with a blue wavy frill. As for railroad maps, 
the less said the better. 

The early land-survey maps of our western 
plains were concocted in central offices, not on 
the ground; therefore on the Colorado and 
Nebraska line they do not tie in by four miles 
and a half east and west. The Government 
paid the full price for accurate surveys, but 
with a man in charge of a keg of whiskey gal- 
loping ahead on a mule, with several investi- 
gating Indians in war paint galloping behind, 
burnt matches stuck in the ground did duty 
as the required and sworn to charred stakes. 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 325 

The maps made from the surveys were not 
standard permanent instructions of much 
value. Modern geodetic and geological-survey 
charts, modern coast-survey charts, are ad- 
mirable and useful beyond criticism ; but it has 
taken a long while to reach this perfection. 

On one occasion I was invited to invest in 
a gold placer in Wyoming to be washed out by 
hydraulicking. The geological-survey contour 
chart showed conclusively that it would be im- 
possible to secure sufficient water with suffi- 
cient head to wash the gravel. What has been 
done with the prospect since dredges have been 
put into successful operation I do not know. 
On another occasion I reported adversely on 
an Alaskan ditch proposition. The watershed 
tributary to the ditch was easily integrated 
from the Government contour chart, the yearly 
precipitation was also known. The promoters 
claimed 5,000 miner's inches ; I could not figure 
more than 500; investors nevertheless went 
ahead. The next year they reported that the 
season had been one of unusual drought, and 
the year after that the company was in the 
hands of a receiver. 

American law is in most States the out 
growth of English common law, and in our 



326 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Spanish and French States, of Roman law. 
The common law in England is the outcome of 
custom finally passed on by the courts or de- 
fined by acts of Parliament. In many of our 
State codes we have attempted to reduce the 
principles to statutes governing particular 
cases. This is often helpful and often not. 
Moses laid down principles : Thou shalt not 
kill; Honor thy father and thy mother — but 
the enforcement became specific. Codes sup- 
plemented principles. 

"If any man smite his neighbor mortally, 
then the elders of his city shall deliver him 
into the hand of the avenger of blood that he 
may die." 

"Thine eye shall not pity, life for life, eye 
for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot 
for foot." 

"If a man have a stubborn and rebellious 
son all the men of his city shall stone him with 
stones that he die." 

It was from snap decisions in specific cases 
that the laws of the Medes and Persians grew 
up, laws that changed not. 

Lord Wolseley credits Napoleon with the 
greatest intellect the human race has ever pro- 
duced. Bonaparte, First Consul, personally 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 327 

worked over the wording of the Civil Code. He 
wanted its provisions so clear that even the 
most ignorant peasant could understand. As 
French is an admirably definite and clear lan- 
guage, as the French have a passion for logic, 
as the greatest legal minds of France aided 
and were aided by Bonaparte in evolving this 
code, it furnishes an admirable example of 
Permanent Written Standard-Practice Instruc- 
tions. It was, moreover, only one of seven 
great organizing acts which he made into spe- 
cific standard-practice instructions, these in- 
structions having persisted almost unchanged 
to the present time. 

The standardizing operations, the ratchet 
action, is of very great importance. A python 
will swallow a deer, a garter snake will swal- 
low a large frog. The snake's teeth are set 
slanting backward. One jaw moves forward 
over the flesh, takes hold and draws until the 
other jaw can slip forward and sink the 
curved teeth in. In this way the large body is 
drawn into and forced through the small gullet. 
The more difficult the operation the less is 
there any slip back. It is easier to draw a fish 
hook through a wound than out of it. In most 
human affairs efficiency is in the end gained by 



1/ 



328 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

going forward and through rather than by 
struggling forever on the near side. 

An American weakness is to be discouraged 
by difficulties and to back-water instead of 
overcoming troubles and going forward. All 
the world knows that compound steam-engines 
use less coal and water than simple engines. 
The compound principle was successfully ap- 
plied in France and Germany to locomotives. 
The steam pressures were naturally much 
higher. American railroads rushed into com- 
pounds with inadequate preparation, knowl- 
edge, or designs. Difficulties of all kinds de- 
veloped, due partly to the high pressures, partly 
to the added dependent and increasingly ineffi- 
cient sequences. A case dwells in memory in 
which it took 80 hours to renew an interme- 
diate packing. Compounds as tried proved ex- 
pensive and troublesome both to operate and to 
repair. Instead of being perfected as in France 
and in Germany, in order to gain the advan- 
tages of the principle, they have been aban- 
doned by American roads almost without ex- 
ception. Temporary expediency governs — not 
ideals. 

The marvelous results due to standardization 
of gunnery practice in the American fleet have 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 329 

already been referred to. These results were 
achieved by the ratchet process, by holding 
onto every gain and by never allowing any slip 
back, these results being secured by a volumin- 
ous book of instructions and suggestions. In 
this book best ways as ascertained to date are 
specifically prescribed, by written, permanent 
standard-practice instructions, but these in- 
structions are subject to a bombardment of 
suggestions and all these suggestions, however 
foolish, are tabulated, printed, and confiden- 
tially published. 

The grains of wheat are winnowed from the 
chaff, common sense finds its own reward in 
approval, and the makers of foolish sugges- 
tions are ridiculed and shamed by their own 
comrades. Those in charge of these instruc- 
tions, of the analysis of practice and results, 
waste no time in finding out what European 
rivals are doing. They know that the way to 
discover the North Pole is to go there as fast 
as possible, not to waste time and money 
watching the preparations of others; they 
know that the way to shoot quick and straight 
and far in a heavy sea is to attain high speed 
and shatter targets at long ranges, rather than 
to spy on what the other fellow is about. 



330 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

The feeling about this naval practice is akin 
in spirit to the attitude of an American grain 
exporter who showed a Hungarian investigator 
our whole elevator and grain shipment installa- 
tions, from the wheat fields of Dakota to At- 
lantic steamers. He was asked, "Why do you 
show foreigners, future competitors and rivals, 
our methods ?" "Because they can't understand 
half they see, they can't remember half they 
understand, and by the time they have copied 
all we have, it will be obsolete with us and we 
shall be ten years ahead." This applies, how- 
ever, equally to our own backwardness com- 
pared to foreigners in so many other directions. 
The way to forge ahead is to get busy, not to 
copy. 

It is not only in its charts, in its naval gun- 
nery, in its agricultural department, that the 
United States Government has established per- 
manent written instructions. 

The specifications of the purchasing depart- 
ment of the navy are at once the most com- 
plete, the most modern, and the best I have ever 
seen. That the plans were evolved and per- 
fected by graduates of Annapolis speaks highly 
for the practical value of the general education 
there imparted. 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 331 

There are many hundred different specifica- 
tions covering everything that the navy regu- 
larly uses; the specifications for eggs covered 
several pages; the specifications for potatoes 
are as follows: 

Potatoes, Irish (East Coast) in sacks or barrels. — 
To be selected stock of standard market sorts, sound, 
fresh, free from scab and mechanical injuries. One 
price only shall be quoted by bidders for both old and 
new potatoes either of which may be delivered at the 
option of the contractor. Potatoes shall measure not 
less than 2 inches in smallest diameter. 

To be delivered in either sacks or barrels, according 
to the ordinary commercial usage of the locality in 
which delivery is made. Each barrel or bag to be 
marked with the net weight. 

Copies of the above specifications can be obtained 
upon application to the various Navy pay offices or to 
the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Navy Depart- 
ment, Washington, D. C. 

When advances are not only definitely re- 
corded but when the best practice is carefully 
and systematically reduced to writing, progress 
made is held and built upon in an industrial 
plant or any other undertaking. Every shop, 
every institution, has its great body of common- 
law practices that have gradually crept in, com- 
mon law variously understood and variously in- 
terpreted by those most affected. Often the 
traditions of the past are treasured up in the 
brain of some old employee, who transmits 



332 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

them, much as the memories of old bards were 
formerly the only available history. 

We have known foremen to refuse deliber- 
ately to tell a new official how certain work was 
done. The defiant stand assumed was that this 
was a personal secret. The history of brass 
castings is filled with these secrets of composi- 
tions. An English tool forger pretended he 
could smell good steel and he imposed the same 
conviction on his employers. Whenever, in any 
plant, Bonaparte's most lasting work is under- 
taken — namely, written codification of current 
practices — it is astonishing how much is found 
that is contradictory, how much is vague and 
indefinite, how much is involved and compli- 
cated that might be direct and simple, how 
much is wholly lacking. 

Each one of the ten preceding efficiency prin- 
ciples can and should be reduced to written, 
permanent standard-practice instructions so 
that each may understand the whole and also 
his own relation to it. In some plants the only 
rules obtainable or visible are certain subsi- 
diary conduct rules, offensively expressed and 
ending with the threat of discharge. 

I remember a wily superintendent who, when 
asked by a manager to post some additional 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 333 

offensive rule, modestly suggested it would 
have more force if signed by the manager him- 
self. The latter fell into the trap and posted the 
rule, which was soon obliterated by abusive and 
scurrilous amendments, comments, and epi- 
thets. The superintendent himself did not lose 
prestige. The ideals of a plan or undertaking 
can be expressed in a few words. One of the 
mottoes of American naval practice is: "Ef- 
ficiency and Economy." This is amplified into 
special rules governing all kinds of activities. 
I have before me the following : 

Navy Department 

Washington, April 22nd, 1911. 
Attention is invited to General Order No. 36 of August 
20, 1909. 

G. v. L. Meyer, 
Secretary of the Navy. 
The effort to save coal shall not be allowed to dimin- 
ish the efficiency of the ship or to affect adversely the 
health or comfort of the personnel. It is strictly for- 
bidden to save coal by curtailing the use of the turrets 
or steamers or by unduly reducing light, ventilation, 
or the supply of fresh water. 

It is to be noticed that the rule is not one of 
spur toward higher effort, but to hold back the 
over-zealous ; it is not one to stimulate the in- 
efficiency of depression, but to restrain the over- 
efficiency of joyous exaggeration. It is not a 
rule "that enforces a high-speed process in 



334 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

which none but the strong survive/' but it is a 
rule protecting the interests of all. 

Discipline and the fair deal do not require 
voluminous initial instructions, although both 
discipline and the fair deal should curtail au- 
tomatism. 

Standard-Practice Instructions are the per- 
manent laws and practices of a plant. What 
these laws, practices and customs are should 
/ first be carefully ascertained and be reduced 
to writing by a competent and high-class inves- 
tigator, and it will be all the better if he has 
had legal training. It will take considerable 
work to find out what the practices are, as dif- 
ferent officials from president down may have 
different opinions and theories and also the 
practice may vary from month to month. It 
is quite usual to find the actual practice quite 
different from what the general manager or 
president supposes it is. Men do what they can, 
not what they have been told. The purpose is 
to find out what current practice is, not what it 
is supposed to be. 

The next step in the work is to harmonize 
the discrepancies, to cut out what is useless or 
harmful, and to supplement the resultant body 
by needed additions. 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 335 

When this constructive work has been per- 
formed there will be a preliminary code. In 
actual practice it will be found that it is still 
defective, incomplete or contradictory. It is to 
be made workable not by throwing it to the 
winds and reverting to the previous state of 
semi-anarchy every time a difficulty arrives, 
but by carefully considered amendments. The 
code being made up of a number of different 
statements and enactments can be amended by 
sending out notice of withdrawal of any enact- 
ment, at the same time issuing the amended 
enactment, the substitution being effected as in 
the illustration that follows : — 

On and after receipt, substitute Rule 5a, dated June 
1, 1911, for Rule 5, dated September 28, 1909. Read 
carefully the new rule, note the changes made and 
send signed receipts to head office. 

The maintenance of the code is the duty of 
a qualified, interested minor official to whom all 
suggestions should be referred. The code itself 
is not his creation but the outgrowth of the 
plant's operating needs. The code goes out over 
the signed signature of the highest available 
official. There may be supplementary signa- 
tures of the department officials. For example, 



\^ 



V 



336 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

rules for the installation and maintenance of 
belting should be drawn up by the official in 
charge of maintenance, should be collated and 
put in standard form by the codifier, should be 
promulgated over the signatures of the super- 
intendent, of department head, even of belt 
foreman as well as of general manager or presi- 
dent. The belt foreman's business, if he does 
not like the rules, is not to sign them until he 
has fought the matter out, but it is not his busi- 
ness to disregard them. The natural inclination 
is to prefer individual anarchy, but anarchy 
never leads anywhere. 

In time quite a body of standard-practice in- 
structions will grow up, most of them suggested 
and evolved by the employees. Records will re- 
quire many pages of specific instructions, if the 
records are to be reliable, immediate and ade- 
quate. Standardized conditions also ultimately 
require a large volume, but the largest volume 
of all is the book covering standardized opera- 
tions. It is pathetically and ignorantly sup- 
posed that standard instructions destroy a 
man's initiative and make of him an automaton. 
Compared to the drop of the sparrow through 
the air, or the scamper of the squirrel down a 



STANDARD-PRACTICE INSTRUCTIONS 337 

tree, a staircase does indeed limit the initiative 
of a man going from the roof to the ground. 
He who prefers it may let himself down from 
the window by a rope. I prefer the limitation, 
common-sense, safety and ease of the staircase. 
A ferryboat limits the initiative of a commuter 
entering the city and a tunnel even more limits 
this initiative. Those who prefer it are wel- 
come to the right to swim the Hudson or to use 
a small skiff of their own. The flanges of the 
locomotive and car wheels confine the train to 
the steel rails, and this is a great curtailment 
of initiative compared to the free path of the 
buffalo or of the bull-whacker across the plains. 

The fact is that the limitation of initiative 
professedly so dreaded is wholly imaginary. To 
follow the better and easier way is to lessen 
effort for the same result, to leave more oppor- 
tunity for higher initiative to invent or evolve 
still better ways. 

The aviator flying 72 miles an hour is the 
greatest initiator in the world to-day, yet to a 
degree never before experienced he is limited 
by his engine, and nothing would be so welcome 
as standard-practice instructions that would 
help keep his engine going, as automatic stabil- 



338 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ity for his plane, gladly relinquishing his own 
initiative in favor of tested standard practice 
in both these respects. 

Any undertaking run without written stand- 
ard-practice instructions is incapable of pro- 
gressive advance, but by means of written 
instructions advances far more rapid than those 
attained by insects and birds are possible. 
Wireless telegraphy is but suggested, experi- 
ments described, and inside of ten years our 
coast is fringed with the masts of rival systems 
and messages are transmitted across the ocean ! 
The first flights of aeroplanes were but eight 
years ago, and to-day they are carrying twelve 
passengers or flying 72 miles an hour. Five 
years of planned, attained, and recorded prog- 
ress will accomplish more than twenty years of 
rule of thumb tucked away under the hats of 
shifting employees. 



XIV 

THE TWELFTH PRINCIPLE : EFFICIENCY 

REWARD 



"When I heard," said the Badger, "that the money 
you needed was to be offered to a temple for your 
soul, I went to the island of Sado, and gathering the 
sand and earth which had been cast away as worth- 
less by the miners, fused it afresh in the fire; at this 
work I spent months and days, and here it is for 
you." — Tales of Old Japan. 

All that the doctrine of equal rights can hope to 
accomplish is that the man who is most deserving shall 
be placed where he should be. Until the last page of 
the last volume is written in the Book of Years, 
Merit alone will rule the earth. — Herbert Kaufmann. 

There is nothing men will not attempt when great 
enterprises hold out the promise of great rewards. — 
Livy. 

Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, 
when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. — 
Proverbs, 3, 27. 



Chapter XIV 

THE TWELFTH PRINCIPLE : EFFICIENCY 

REWARD 

PUZZLES :— The themes of fairy tales ! To 
sort out the tangled skeins of silk, to 
separate the colored grains of sand! 
Puzzles: — to decipher the hieroglyphs and the 
cuneiforms, to tax all the powers of investiga- 
tion, of theories, of analysis, of philosophy, of 
interpretation! Solutions, generalizations, are 
fascinating. 

Books, encyclopedias of 50,000,000 words, 
250,000 words in the English language, outside 
of dictionaries scarcely 10,000 different — but 
only 26 letters of the alphabet ; these again re- 
duced to three classes, labials, dentals, palatals, 
each shifting from dialect to dialect as in pater y 
vater, father, all the languages of the world 
synthesized back to mama, dada, gaga, further 
back even to the unconscious ejaculations of 
the newly-born child ! 

341 



342 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Millions and millions of different substances 
in the world! There are countless different 
kinds of oil alone, all consisting of carbon, 
hydrogen and oxygen. Vary the proportions of 
the elements, and the compounds shift into 
alcohols, sugars, starches, dextrines, acids — 
into essences, aromas, into dyes, drugs, poisons ! 
All the substances in the universe are but com- 
binations of less than seventy elements, and it 
is the dream, the expectation of modern chem- 
istry to find whether these, if not but one, are 
not at most three or four. 

In the last analysis, it is the marvelous sim- 
plicity of it all that enchants, almost stuns. 
Gravitation holds solar systems in their paths, 
carves the face of the land, calms the ocean's 
unrest ! Crystallization gave us glacial epochs, 
life gives us biology, zoology, history, philoso- 
phy. Compared to life, physical, psychical, 
mental, all else seems simple ; yet how few the 
instincts to perpetuate and develop life! The 
instinct for immediate life, the instinct for 
eternal life, the preservation of the individual 
and the race — yet both these instincts are main- 
tained and stimulated by one single principle, 
the last of the twelve, the principle of "effi- 
ciency REWARD." 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 343 

For years there has been the unanswered 
question : "What is the difference between the 
dead and the living, between the animate and 
the inanimate ?" Whatever responds to an 
efficiency reward is alive ; what cannot respond, 
is inanimate. There is a difference between the 
drop of water in obedience to the law of gravi- 
tation, descending from the mountain top to 
the sea, and the pine tree growing tall and slim 
that its needles may reach the light and live. 

Darwin showed that life was preserved and 
developed by the survival of the efficient, by 
natural selection — that individual variation 
due to the survival of the efficient was trans- 
mitted by sexual selection. Nature is accused 
of caring nothing for the individual, of caring 
much for the race, yet she moulds impartially 
all individuals and all races by offering and 
paying efficiency rewards. There is for every 
individual, for every race, destruction, hell-fire 
lurking everywhere, but it is the efficiency re- 
ward that tempts us far from the danger zone. 
Take away the stimulus of efficiency reward — 
individual life and race life would vanish from 
the earth! 

We can smile at those who in their ignorance 
try to nullify the principles of efficiency re- 



344 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ward, to banish it from human affairs. Yet 
man, because he perversely went backward 
into darkness rather than forward into light — 
man who is what he is because of high reward 
for individual efficiency — forgot the principle 
that had made him, forgot that it was eternal 
and that ever greater rewards were still ahead, 
and tried to hold exclusively what he had and 
to enhance its value by depriving others of 
what had been given him. The priests of all 
ages, those to whom it had been given to read 
some pages of nature's open book, immediately 
made mysteries of this knowledge, tried to put 
the book under lock and key. Dynasties which 
had reached their kingship through individual 
efficiency — the Carolingians, the descendants of 
the pawnbroking Burggrave of Nuremberg, the 
Tudors, the Bourbons, immediately substituted 
for the principle of efficiency the artificial 
principle of the Divine Right of Kings, of king- 
ship by the Grace of God. Men who, like David 
and Solomon, ought to have know T n that there 
was supreme joy in winning the love of one 
woman, whether Bathsheba or the Queen of 
Sheba, immediately laid in (by the mercenary 
path, not by means of emotional efficiency) 
whole harems of useless atrophying women, 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 345 

David's chief pleasure apparently being to shut 
them up in remote and distressful seclusion for 
the mean pleasure of watching their lives waste 
and of depriving other men of wives (see II 
Samuel, 20:3). All nature shows that inno- 
vating efficiency is the direct effect of reward, 
but the history of human institutions shows 
that these are chiefly devised by the selfish few 
to appropriate rewards without efficiency, yet 
coating the pill by holding out the lure of a re- 
mote and hypothetical reward for efficiency to 
those who bow the knee in service, to the de- 
luded many. 

Thus is offered by the priests the promise of 
heaven to those who yield to the demands of 
the church, by generals the promise of Para- 
dise with houris galore to those who die in 
battle, by kings the promise of occasional 
largesse and festivities to those who pay taxes 
and otherwise serve, by guilds commercial suc- 
cess to members, by unions fixed wages for in- 
adequate work to those who join them. 

The early settlers in America had fled from 
caste. They had left it behind them. The effi- 
cient came to the new land of hardship and 
promise, and the efficient earned their indi- 
vidual rewards. When they set up their gov- 



346 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ernment, they made no provision for the State 
church, they abolished all titles and hereditary 
offices, they provided for no standing army, 
there were no interstate barriers to trade and 
free movement, and there were no guilds. The 
apprentice became journeyman, the journey- 
man became master, the master became head 
of a plant. There were so many opportunities 
that the caste principle of fixed day's wage 
without reference to performance was over- 
looked. The master with his few workmen 
under him could personally supervise and pro- 
mote or discharge. Yet the iniquity of the 
fixed rate per hour was clearly indicated 1,900 
years ago, in the parable of the laborers in the 
vineyard. A householder went out early in the 
morning to hire laborers, and when he had 
agreed with the laborers for a penny a day he 
sent them into his vineyard; and he went out 
at the third hour, and again at the sixth, the 
ninth, and the eleventh hour and saw others 
standing in the market place idle, and to them 
he said, "Go ye also into the vineyard and what- 
soever is right I will give you." This promise 
of receiving what was right — pay on the basis 
of performance, not on the basis of time — 
stimulated the workers, and even those last en- 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 347 

gaged did as much work before stopping as 

those who had been making a slow pace 

through the twelve-hour-long scorching and 

burdensome day. 

So when even was come, the lord of the vineyard 
saith unto his steward, Call the labourers and give 
them their hire. . . . And when they came that 
were hired about the eleventh hour, they received every 
man a penny. But when the first came, they supposed 
that they should have received more; . . . and they mur- 
mured against the goodman of the house. . . . But 
he answered one of them, and said, Friend, I do thee 
no wrong: didst not thou agree with me for a penny? 
. . . Is thine eye evil because I am good? 

The day-wage system, contrary as it is both 
to the underlying principle of efficiency reward 
and also to all principles of equity, since it 
lacks any intelligent relation between pay and 
performance, is doomed, in spite of hoary cus- 
tom, current practice, in spite of combined 
(although opposed) efforts of unions and em- 
ployers' associations. Compensation for work 
cannot remain an exception to the general law 
that there must be a definite equivalent, based 
on the two elements of quantity and quality; 
and our ability to measure accurately both 
quantity and quality, whether the weight in 
carats of the diamond and its blue-whiteness, 
whether the weight of coal and the heat units 
per pound, is one of the measures of civiliza- 
tion. In iall the ten-thousand years before coal, 



v 



348 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

during which the human race warmed itself 
and cooked with wood fires exclusively, there 
is probably not a single instance in which any 
exact heat-unit equivalent and price demanded 
or paid was determined. The same happy-go- 
lucky vagueness was transmitted to coal pur- 
chases, and even yet most coal is purchased 
without reference to analysis. 

Wiser buyers, large consumers, purchase on 
specification sustained by analysis and verified 
by test. A coal that looks like another may be 
worth only one-tenth as much. Before Archi- 
medes discovered the relation of weight to bulk, 
the principle of specific gravity, before he ex- 
perimentally determined the relative weights 
of water, gold, and silver, goldsmiths had a 
joyous time swindling their customers, since it 
was only by color that the value of the worked- 
up metal could be judged. It speaks well for 
the general honesty of the ancient coiners that 
the old silver and old gold coins are so pure. 
This blind trust as to quality would not work 
today as to metals, does not work as to coal, 
will soon not work as to wages. It was pon- 
dering on the problem of detecting a suspected 
swindle that led Archimedes to the discovery 
of specific gravity. 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 349 

Efficiency rewards hold good for nearly 
every worker in life except the day worker. 
The girl who makes a business of it, secures a 
valuable husband, an enormous and permanent 
reward for a very few days of competent en- 
deavor. This is the oldest competitive business 
of all, and results in a trust greater than the 
Standard Oil, greater even than the Catholic 
Church. 

The hunter who starts early, who has prac- 
ticed much, who works hard, brings home the 
game. The farmer who selects his seed care- 
fully, tills and fertilizes his crops scientifically, 
secures twice the yield per acre ; the merchant 
who hits the fancies or the necessities of the 
buying public becomes rich; the lawyer who 
wins cases charges heavier fees; the doctor 
who has made a name for himself charges 
fancy prices for very simple operations; the 
clergyman who is eloquent receives a call to a 
larger church ; the politician who stands in with 
the boys attains ultimately to a senatorial toga. 
Everywhere — except for almost the largest 
class of all, the men who work with their 
hands — there is special and closely connected 
reward for individual efficiency. Are the toil- 
ers to have no efficiency reward? The induce- 



350 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ment is held out that if they join unions they 
will receive day wages — high day wages — short 
hours, and that they will not have to work 
hard. Permanence of pay, which is far more 
vital than rate of pay, is not guaranteed. It is 
the earning in a working lifetime, divided by 
all the days, that counts, not the nominal wages 
per day. In the modern industrial state initia- 
tive must not be destroyed, separate action 
must exist ; there must be individual as well as 
collective bargaining; the individual must also 
count; the guild is not everything. I have no 
antagonism to unions. They have been and 
are still very necessary; they have mitigated 
the tyranny of the employer and of his irre- 
sponsible foremen over helpless, because di- 
vided, workers. Unions should be supported 
in their every effort to make the work of 
women and children unnecessary. Unions have 
demonstrated in many instances that very high 
rates of pay per day are compatible with flour- 
ishing business for the employer. By estab- 
lishing and maintaining a scale they have done 
an eminent service in preventing a blind slash- 
ing of wages below the living limit, in order to 
lessen costs, high for reasons not connected with 
wages. Unions have accomplished much. Com- 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 351 

ing to the subject from a different point of 
view, I agree with them in their attitude to- 
ward piece rates, which are intended to stimu- 
late strenuousness, often harmful strenuous- 
ness, the exact opposite of efficiency; but as to 
a fixed rate of pay per hour or day without 
reference either to equivalent or to individual- 
ity, the whole teachings of the ages, the whole 
tendency of the time, are against it. We can 
well excuse churches which try to maintain 
their tottering sway; we can excuse dynasties 
who inculcate the divine right of kings ; we can 
excuse guilds like the stock exchange which 
attempt to limit all the business of its kind to 
their own members ; but it is one of the trage- 
dies of this era of discovery and invention, this 
era of the looting of natural resources of the 
universe for the sake of man, that justice, 
the protection of equivalent, should be denied 
both employer and employee, and the reward of 
individual excellence be denied the worker. 

Never before were fairness, justice, knowl- 
edge, accuracy, so much needed. A hundred 
years ago, except for a few sailing ships, wind- 
mills and waterwheels, and a very few cards 
steam-engines, all the workable energy of the 
world came from the muscles of men and 



352 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

domesticated animals, the slow man and the 
slower ox or ass. Men and animals ate today 
what the season's sun prepared for them. The 
energy was incarnate. In the last hundred 
years we have tapped the reservoirs of energy 
accumulated, stored by the sun in former ages. 

We are like a young man until recently on 
scant allowance who has suddenly inherited an 
immense fortune. In the United States the 
uncarnate energy used is thirty times as great 
as was the incarnate energy sixty years ago; it 
is as if each head of a family had inherited 
thirty slaves forced to labor for him without 
pay beyond the obligation to maintain. It is 
increasingly less the hard muscular labor of the 
hands and body that counts, it is more and more 
the intelligence to direct mechanical slaves that 
counts. The man who smashes a machine be- 
cause he fears it will take his job, the man who 
refuses the promotion due him for efficient con- 
trol, misses the richest gift that any generation 
has ever been offered. 

Efficiency reward cannot be equitably offered 
to the worker until equivalency is first conceded 
and established. The basis of equivalency is of 
little importance compared to the principle. 
There is no moral objection to employers and 






EFFICIENCY REWARD 353 

employees agreeing on a minimum wage rate 
and maximum length of workday, but never- 
theless an equivalent for the day's pay should 
be set up in work — a definite, carefully deter- 
mined equivalent. In bricklaying, for instance, 
if 400 bricks is agreed to as a layer's output 
for a day, and $4.00 is the wages for 400 bricks, 
and if it is further agreed that he may not 
lay any more, then, if with the help of modern 
science he can lay the 400 bricks in a single 
hour, let him lay them in that time and return 
to his garden or to the companionship of his 
wife and children, and let other workers take 
his place during the daylight hours. 

In the words of that three-thousand year old 
proverb, "Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, 
do it with thy might, for there is no work, or 
device, or knowledge, or wisdom in hell." 

The trouble with piece rates was that they , 
attempted to solve, by a crude application of v 
the principle of strenuousness, not an efficiency 
principle, a number of problems that could be 
solved only by the application of many effi- 
ciency principles. Ideals were not clearly seen, 
common-sense was not invoked, competent 
counsel was not secured, discipline and the fair 
deal were equally neglected, as cases are known 



354 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

in which piece workers had to begin work at 5 
a. m. in order to make a day's wage. Reliable 
records were lacking, there was no planning, 
no despatching, no standardized conditions and 
no standardized operations — only arbitrary 
piece-rate schedules, a day rate of average cur- 
rent wage to the phenomenal worker being the 
ultimate measure of the piece rate. 

The first strike recorded in history was a 
strike against a cut in piece rates. 

And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to 
serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter 
with hard bondage, in mortar, and in brick, and in all 
manner of service. . . . And Moses and Aaron went 
in and told Pharaoh, Let the people go, that they may 
hold a feast. . . . And the king of Egypt said unto 
them, Wherefore do ye ... let the people from 
their works? ... ye make them rest from their 
burdens. And Pharaoh commanded the same day the 
taskmasters, . . . saying, Ye shall not more give 
the people straw to make brick, as heretofore. . . . 
And the tale of the bricks which they did make hereto- 
fore, ye shall lay upon them; ye shall not diminish 
ought thereof: for they be idle; therefore they cry, 
saying, Let us go . . . Let there more work be laid 
upon the men . . . and let them not regard vain 
words. Pharaoh said to the children of Israel, Ye are 
idle, ye are idle: ... Go therefore now and work; 
for there shall no straw be given you, yet shall ye de- 
liver the tale of the bricks. 

What followed is a matter of history. They 
walked out and stayed out for forty years, and 
then their descendants got other and better 
jobs. 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 355 

Piece rates, resting on a wrong and vicious 
principle, are too crude a device ever to be per- 
manently satisfactory. The time required for 
a given task varies with the general overhead 
conditions, varies with the condition of the ma- 
chine, varies with the quality and excellence of 
the tools, varies with the hardness of the ma- 
terial worked, varies with the number of pieces 
to be made, and finally varies with the experi- 
ence, strength and skill of the operator. 

If all conditions have been standardized, if 
rates have been based on times carefully, scien- 
tifically, and impartially determined, if there is 
a guaranteed rate per hour in case piece rates 
are for any accidental cause too low — then an 
efficiency piece-rate system may with difficulty 
be made tolerable. 

A profit-sharing plan is not an efficiency re- 
ward. Out of the eighteen items of operating 
costs or manufacturing costs, as distinguished 
from selling costs, only one is directly influ- 
enced by the worker, and that is the time- 
quality of his work. For the other seventeen 
items the management is partly responsible, 
but often many of them are beyond the control 
of either manager or worker — the prices of 
materials, for instance. These are often the 
largest part of the cost. 



\X 



356 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

In building locomotives the costs of direct 
labor are 15 per cent, the overhead expense 15 
per cent, and the material cost 70 per cent. 
This does not include any general office ex- 
penses or selling expense or profit. In another 
plant the raw materials amounted to $32,000, 
000 a year, the labor costs to $600,000, over- 
head to $400,000. In this latter case, assuming 
a manufactured product of 360,000,000 pounds 
worth $0.10 a pound, and a selling cost of 
$1,000,000, there would be a profit of $2,000,- 
000 or 5.5 per cent, about $0,005 a pound. Let 
prices drop five mills and profits are wiped 
out; let prices rise five mills and profits are 
doubled; let an efficient management reduce 
material wastes one per cent and the added 
profit is $360,000. Let labor deliver twice as 
much work for the same wages and the gain 
is only $300,000. 

Equity demands direct connection between 
efficiency reward and efficiency quality. A dis- 
tribution pro rata to wages at the end of the 
year, to bad and good alike, of a profit due 
always in largest part to causes over which the 
worker has no control, is illogical although it 
may be kind. What direct incentive is there to 
a good worker to put forth special effort when 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 357 

all the efforts of all the workers can be nega- 
tived by a slump in the market price? What 
direct incentive to put forth special effort when 
the laziest and the most wasteful will be given 
the same proportionate reward? An efficiency 
reward is one which the worker can see and 
grasp during the effort, one that is paid to him 
for his individual excellence in that for which 
he is individually responsible. What incentive 
would there be to owners and jockeys of race 
horses if instead of stakes, competed for and 
won at the post, a small portion of the gate re- 
ceipts were distributed pro rata at the end of 
the season to all, including the also rans ? What 
incentive would ball players have to manifest 
individual excellence if, at the end of the sea- 
son, all shared pro rata in a bonus more de- 
pendent for amount on the weather than on 
their efforts ? Would it be an efficiency reward 
to offer fruit packers a bonus based on the 
price of the yield when a single frost may de- 
stroy the whole crop, or suitable weather 
double it, with prices affected by competitive 
product grown three thousand miles away, as 
Idaho and Washington apples competing with 
New York fruit? 

Profit sharing is not inequitable as are piece 



358 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

payments ; it is an amiable kindness on the part 
of the plant owners, but it is not efficiency 
reward. 

There are, however, forms of bonus above 
guaranteed wages that are free both from the 
inequities of piece rates and from the colorless 
amiability of profit sharing. 

The worker sells two different possessions, 
both his own — his time and his skill. He should 
be robbed of neither. Time payments which 
make no allowance for skill are wrong; skill 
payments which make no provision for time are 
also wrong. It is easy to measure time. We 
can do it with the watch that made the dollar 
famous. In horse racing, time is used exclu- 
sively to measure skill. The horse that is able 
to clip a fifth of a second from a world's record, 
may by that act add $10,000 to his value. Skill 
may also be measured in time. In the battle 
practice of the American fleet it is more im- 
portant to fire 120 rounds an hour and make 10 
per cent of hits, than to fire 12 rounds an hour 
and make 50 per cent of hits. 

Mr. F. A. Halsey, in his premium plan under 
which he guarantees compensation per hour 
irrespective of product, and in addition pays a 
premium of one-third pay for all time saved 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 359 

over previous records, laid the foundation for 
rational efficiency reward. As usually put into 
practice the plan is imperfect, because the di- 
viding point between day wages and premium 
addition is carelessly accepted without scientific 
or reliable accuracy. It reminds one of the 
German's measure of road distance, the Stitnde, 
or hour, which conveys no meaning unless one 
knows what kind of an animal and the habitual 
speed shown for an hour. In the centuries 
before Stunde was a measure of distance, 
Caesar's millia passuum — the thousand steps of 
the soldier — were used as a measure of time; 
very accurate as to distance, not bad as to time, 
as there were no railroad trains to catch; but 
before the days of clocks, a measure of distance 
based on guess of time on a cloudy day was not 
a unit of record either reliable, immediate or 
adequate. There are minutes that seem like 
hours, so wearily do they drag ; there are hours 
that fly like minutes, each minute holding more 
than other days. 

F. W. Taylor's immense merit was that above 
everything else he insisted on the necessity and 
possibility of determining very closely the 
upper limit of high and rapid performance 
under normal conditions, a performance that 



\S 



360 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

could be kept up for years or for a working 
lifetime without detriment to the worker, yet 
that eliminated the flagrant or avoidable waste. 
Taylor thus laid the founations for equitable 
bonus for each operation to each individual. 

Ganit was the first to evolve and use in the 
compensation of workers a plan that retained 
full pay by the hour (therefore pay for time 
quantity, a definite original recompense) and 
pay for time quality, for a specific task, for 
. which a most carefully ascertained time had 
been determined. No reward was paid unless 
full time quality was realized. It was on the 
principle that a fisherman either caught his fish 
or he did not ; there were no half or quarter fish 
for near skill in angling. 

Many of nature's efficiency rewards are of 
this character, and it is a strong, virile prin- 
ciple. 

The author, owing to the nature of the work 
in the plants he was counseling, found it unde- 
sirable to make the line of demarcation so sharp 
between efficiency and inefficiency, and there- 
fore followed nature's softer plan of efficiency 
reward. Every plant or animal must maintain 
a certain minimum of efficiency or it dies; 
atrophy results in extinction; but above this 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 361 

lower limit, reward is proportioned to effi- 
ciency — small reward to the less efficient, 
special honors to the most efficient. 

The principle of the wage target with a small 
bull's eye is applied. Shots outside of the 
bull's eye but in the target also count. 

In the original plan, while certain operations 
averaged four hours under the same workman 
working with the same diligence, on one occa- 
sion the time would be five hours and on an- 
other three hours, owing to conditions over 
which the worker had no control. It was highly 
desirable to maintain the interest of the oper- 
ator in the discouraging jobs, so while a stand- 
ard bonus of 20 per cent was paid for attain- 
ing standard time, while 10 per cent bonus was 
paid for attaining 90 per cent of standard time 
and 3.25 per cent bonus for 80 per cent of stand- 
ard time, bonus stopped at 67 per cent of 
standard. If less time than standard was 
used, the worker was paid at his full hourly 
rate for all the time he saved, and was paid in 
addition 20 per cent bonus for the time that he 
worked. A workman had to be very inferior 
who could not regularly earn some bonus. A 
further step to eliminate accidental and inevit- 
able time variations was suggested and worked 



362 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

out by two advisers, Mr. Playfair and Mr. 
Whiteford, who have both made for themselves 
names in efficiency work. Under the new plan 
the worker is charged with all the hours he 
works in any selected period, week, month, etc., 
and he is credited with and paid for all the 
standard hours of work which he turns out. 
The bonus, whether for job, for day, for month 
or longer period, is paid on the efficiency rela- 
tion between actual and standard. If a worker 
is present 250 hours in a month and turns out 
250 hours of work in 250 hours actual time, his 
efficiency is 100 per cent, and he earns 20 per 
cent bonus on wages; but if in the same time 
he turns out 300 hours of work, his efficiency 
40 per cent on his wages. 

The standard times are most carefully deter- 
mined by time studies, by observations, by the- 
oretical considerations, by demonstrations, 
using every available method to establish fair 
and correct standards. If the performance is 
walking on a good road and the time eight 
hours, we settle on 24 miles a day as an 
easier task than a quarter of a mile each quar- 
ter hour as in some of the monotonous beats 
of sentries or policemen. If the performance is 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 363 

to be 24 miles, we desire to take for it neither 
16 hours a day nor yet 4 hours, but a time be- 
tween 6 hours and 9, according to the prefer- 
ence of the worker; and it is further realized 
that the best standard of efficiency is not a 
maximum of muscular effort for a short time, 
nor a maximum of physical wear for a long 
time, but a combination of mental and physical 
exhilaration which leaves the worker in best 
condition at the end of the accomplishment, 
whether the unit of time be a few seconds, a 
day, a month, a year, or a lifetime. 

Therefore, in this particular very limited ap- 
plication of efficiency reward the ideals are: — 

(1) A guaranteed hourly rate. 

(2) A lower limit of efficiency, which, if not 
attained, indicates that the worker is a misfit 
and requires either special training or change 
of occupation. 

(3) A progressive efficiency reward, begin- | 
ning at a requirement so low that it is inexcus- 
able not to average it. 

(4) An efficiency standard established after 
careful and reliable investigations of many 
kinds, including time and motion studies. 



\S 



364 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

(5) For work to be performed, a time stand- 
ard that is joyful and exhilarating, therefore 
intermediate between depressing slowness and 
exhausting effort. 

(6) A variation in standards for the same 
work for different machines, conditions and in- 
dividuals, the schedules therefore, being indi- 
vidual. 

(7) The determination for each worker of an 
average efficiency for all jobs over a long period. 

(8) A continuous correction of time stand- 
ards and of wage rate to suit new conditions. 
This is essential and inevitable. Wage rate rises 
f under the new conditions more skill or greater 
effort is required. Time standards have noth- 
ing to do with wages. They are not changed 
to affect earnings either one way or the other, 
but to be accurate and just. The time standard 
for covering a mile for a man on foot is inev- 
itably less for a man on a bicycle, inevitably 
less for a man on a motor cycle than for a man 
on a bicycle. 

(9) The worker must have the personal op- 
tion of working not to a standard time, but be- 
tween limits on each side of standard time. If 
he does not consider standard time fair, he can 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 365 

take his assumed hourly rate and show lower 
efficiency, which greatly enhances the cost to the 
employer, whose self-interest has so to improve 
physical or psychical conditions as to induce the 
worker to attain standards. 

Efficiency constitutes 9 out of the 18 elements 
of cost — efficiency of quality and quantity and 
overhead for materials, for labor and for fixed 
charges. It has been found exceedingly satisfac- 
tory and convenient to base efficiency rewards 
on the cost of efficiencies, the method being so 
flexible as to be applicable to an individual oper- 
ation of a few minutes' duration, or to all the 
work of a man for a long period, or to all the 
work of department or plant. 

Nevertheless, these various forms of bonus 
are but devices of great practical value, just as 
a foot rule or the multiplication table is of 
practical value, but for importance they are not 
to be compared to the broad principle of effi- 
ciency reward which is far above any particular 
device. It is therefore absolutely impossible 
for any combination of workers to prevent the 
application of the principle of efficiency reward 
if any management chooses to adopt it. 

Efficiency reward is not a money payment, 
this is only one of its myriad forms. Men have 



366 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

been willing to die for a smile. Hobson relates 
that one man offered to forfeit a year's pay if 
they would but allow him to be one of the crew 
to sink the "Merrimac" across the entrance to 
Santiago harbor. Garibaldi offered his hearers 
hunger, thirst, hardship, wounds, prison and 
death, and in a frenzy of eagerness they fol- 
lowed him. 

Highest efficiency is easily stimulated, al- 
though there is often no more direct connec- 
tion between act and reward than in profit 
sharing which does not stimulate. In Jack Lon- 
don's elemental tale of the miner of Forty Mile, 
the girl he fought for was the direct prize. He 
would have had to fight if there had been no 
girl and he would have lost, but in Victior 
Hugo's "Toilers of the Sea," the man single- 
handed saved the wrecked steamer, not that he 
might profit, but that he might win a girl's 
love. The bitter tragedy lies in the fact that 
he had striven for a reward, made its hope the 
inspiration of his work when he should have 
known that it could not be attained in that 
manner. 

Twelve principles of efficiency! We began 
with ideals, we end with ideals. Men must have 
ideals or they cannot do good work; there must 



EFFICIENCY REWARD 367 

be possibility of highest efficiency reward or 
neither senses, nor spirit, nor mind is stimu- 
lated. 

He who would take ideals from the world's 
workers, he who would deprive them of the lure 
of individual reward for individual efficiency, 
would indeed make them brother to the ox. 

He who believes the road behind humanity 
registers but a fraction of what is still to be 
attained, seizes on the principle of efficiency re- 
ward to bring to their highest development ma- 
terials, muscle, mind, and above all, spirit. 



XV 

EFFICIENCY PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO 

MEASUREMENT AND CURE 

OF WASTES 



The better prenatal endowment of all humanity, 
eugenics, is advocated by optimists. Favorable physi- 
cal and moral surroundings, hygienics, are advocated 
by practical welfare workers. 

Between eugenics and hygienics lies the almost un- 
tilled but very rich field of character analysis which 
helps the worker to avoid lines of endeavor for which 
he is not suited, which counsels as to the lines of en- 
deavor for which he is fitted. 






Chapter XV 

EFFICIENCY PRINCIPLES APPLIED TO 

MEASUREMENT AND CURE 

OF WASTES 

THERE have always been successful men. 
Alexander, Caesar, Attila, Jenghis 
Khan, Charlemagne, Timur, Hideyo- 
shi, Napoleon — conquerors and empire builders ; 
and these men unconsciously practiced, to a 
limited extent, some of the principles of effi- 
ciency. All their work, except perhaps that of 
Hideyoshi, is characterized by immense waste. 
Jenghis Khan is charged with the destruction 
and death of 6,000,000 human beings. 

These men, even the most destructive of 
them, had ideals, often very high ideals, which 
they largely realized, but waste elimination was 
not one of them. 

The ideal that inspires the formulation of the 
principles of efficiency is elimination of waste, 
of wastes of all kinds resulting finally in 
wastes of the collective human soul. 

371 



372 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

The mistake of the Hindu is that he is an in- 
dividualist and seeks his own Nirvana, an es- 
sentially feminine task. The mistake of the 
Catholic monk making his salvation is that he 
also is an individualist, and is essentially femi- 
nine in his conception of the universe. The 
masculine ethical instinct is not self but family, 
clan, class, section, party, nationality, world — 
not individual aggrandizement, but the ulti- 
mate perfection of the whole world, the creation 
of an earthly paradise, and if man's progress is 
slow it is because of wastes — solely because of 
wastes — wastes of everything that is precious. 
How inconceivably slow has been human pro- 
gress — waste of time; how the accumulated 
stores of nature have been looted, the forests, 
the fertility of the soil, the minerals below the 
surface — wastes of national resources ; how in- 
conceivably hard our tasks have been made for 
us ! Cursed has been the ground ; in sorrow has 
humanity eaten all the days of its life, thorns 
and thistles have we reaped and in the sweat of 
our faces have we worked. Wasted lives, sor- 
row instead of joy, painful, ignorant effort in- 
stead of glad, intelligent activity ! 

Elimination of all wastes may indeed be a 
Utopian ideal, not to be realized in the life of 



THE CURE OF WASTES 973 

our planet, but any waste elimination brings its 
immediate reward. The miners in California, 
the forty-niners, panned gold, and no ground 
that did not contain $20 to the cubic yard was 
pay dirt. The cradle made $5 dirt profitable, the 
sluice box $1 dirt profitable, hydraulic mining 
makes dirt profitable that contains as little as 
$0.05 to the cubic yard. The early miners were 
not discouraged because they could not work 
$0.05 dirt; they manfully tackled and made 
their profit out of $20 dirt. What goes into 
waste is precious and recoverable value, and its 
elimination should bring big reward from the 
start. 

The ideal of the Twelve Efficiency Principles 
is waste elimination, and to this end they have 
been formulated. The mere purpose for which 
waste is to be eliminated is not important. The 
condemnation of Jenghis Khan is not that he 
became a great ruler, but that he unnecessarily 
destroyed 6,000,000 human beings. 

No navigator, whether pirate or merchant- 
man, can make best time for himself and his 
ship who does not know great-circle courses, 
the shortest path from port to port, who does 
not modify his course as little as possible on ac- 
count of intervening land, shoals, adverse 



374 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

winds, or currents. No man can achieve great- 
est success for himself, whether malefactor of 
great wealth or captain of industry, who does 
not eliminate wastes from his own operations. 

There are ultimate ideals like universal peace, 
but a tremendously efficient present naval and 
military organization may further universal 
peace far more effectively than inefficient senti- 
mentality and, even as an efficient navy would 
be most reluctant to enter on an unnecessary 
struggle (since its personnel by reason of its 
efficiency knows better than anyone else the 
hideous waste and cost of war), so it is almost 
impossible to conceive of an efficient leader 
being a great malefactor, or of a great male- 
factor being efficient. 

It would not be a risky experiment to imbue a 
criminal of any kind with the principles that 
eliminate waste and to induce him to practice 
them, for in the end criminality and waste-elim- 
ination are incompatible, and also virtue and 
waste are incompatible; and there is more hope 
of bending the efficient sinner into paths of rec- 
titude where he will accomplish much, than 
there is of making ethical progress with the in- 
efficient. 

Why should we formulate principles? Why 



THE CURE OF WASTES 375 

is intuition not enough? Intuitions are of tre- 
mendous value. They reach out into the future, 
they connect us up with the infinite, they pull 
down part of the divinity; but to call into ex- 
istence what is not yet, has always been one of 
woman's, but not one of men's major instincts. 
We owe all the germs of civilization to woman's 
individuality, because she works alone; but 
what she has once started, men take over and 
develop on a gigantic scale. 

Forty years ago I watched the workers on 
the Suez Canal. Many of them were girls, dig- 
ging up the sand with their bare fingers, scoop- 
ing it into the hollows of their hands, throwing 
it into the rush basket each had woven for her- 
self, lifting the baskets to their heads, and car- 
rying the load of 20 to 30 pounds a hundred 
feet up the bank and dumping it. Panama ex- 
cavation is being done by steam shovels. Re- 
cently I watched one of them at work. The 
fingers of the Egyptian girl had grown into a 
thousand-times-larger steel claws that dug and 
scraped the shattered rock and dirt ; the hollow 
of the girl's hands had developed into a scoop 
containing two cubic yards, or five thousand 
times as much as her two hands could hold ; the 
rush basket had grown into a train of flat cars ; 



376 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

the shapely arm of smooth flesh covering mus- 
cle and bone had grown into a great beam 
moved by chains, flinging great loads onto the 
flat cars; and instead of the 100 feet of walk- 
ing, long trains ran perhaps twenty miles to 
unload. Development by men of a woman's 
method. 

Woman brings a baby into the world, but men 
organize a million grown babies into an army; 
a woman feeds her infant from her own breast, 
but men organize a commissariat department 
that encircles the world; woman teaches each 
separate human being to rise from all fours 
and walk like a man, but a von Moltke speaks 
the word and a million men tramp in time and 
measure ; woman chews hides and greases them 
and smokes them into the softest leather, out 
of which she cuts and sews moccasins, but men 
take the hides of five continents and cut them 
into a million pairs of shoes a week; woman 
spins her single thread and weaves it into cloth, 
men run their thousand spindles and weave 
their miles of fabrics ; woman makes tepees, but 
men build hundred-story-high skyscrapers, 
housing 20,000 people; woman croons her lul- 
laby to her restless baby, but men organize 
grand opera, develop the phonograph; woman 



THE CURE OF WASTES 377 

whispers to her lover at the tryst, but men by 
speech to multitudes secure presidential nomi- 
nations and pile up for the presidency a million 
votes more than the triumphantly elected Cleve- 
land; men connect their offices with all the 
other business offices in the country and shout 
their affairs across the continent, or send their 
danger calls two-thousand miles through the 
air. 

It was Eve who ate the apple, but Noah who 
made the ark; it was Rebecca who deceived 
Isaac, Rachel who robbed her father, but it was 
Joseph with Pharaoh who organized the first 
trust to control the food supply and who ran 
the first corner in grain; it was Pharaoh's 
daughter who rescued Moses, but it was Moses 
and Aaron who organized the first strike and 
walkout. It was David who, with his followers, 
slew two-hundred Philistines, but it was Michal 
who let him down from the window; it was 
Saul who made Israel a kingdom, but it was 
the witch of Endor who, to help Saul, called 
Samuel back from the dead; it was Solomon 
who built the temple by collecting cunning arti- 
ficers, by taking counsel of those who knew 
more than himself, but it was Bathsheba, his 
mother, who made him king. 



378 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Woman creates, men rarely create ; they must 
work developing what is, and big work they 
must do through organization; but organiza- 
tion, however much its heads may have been se- 
lected and collected by intuition, must replace 
intuitions. Wastes, therefore, are not to be 
eliminated by intuition, but through principles. 

The empires of Cyrus, of Alexander, of 
Charlemagne, of Jenghis Khan, of Timur, 
crumbled at their deaths because they rested 
on intuitive excellence, not to be transmitted 
to successors; but Caesar, Hideyoshi, English 
statesmen, the founders of the United States, 
Napoleon, Bismarck and von Moltke, trans- 
mitted organizations founded on principles. 
Most American industrial plants and business 
houses have come to grief in the second genera- 
tion, and even corporations resting on special 
privilege like railroads and street-car lines, 
have passed into receivers' hands and under- 
gone drastic reorganizations. In trying to con- 
trol the great corporations, our statesmen, al- 
though men, are governed by intuitions not by 
principles, fail to swing the general government 
into line to.- do its part ; they make the general 
government maintain disastrous and wasteful 
competition when what is wanted is principles 



THE CURE OF WASTES 379 

that would work for elimination and equitable 
distribution of the immense gain. 

Will the United States Steel Corporation en- 
dure? Not unless it succeeds in substituting 
principles, efficiency principles, for the intui- 
tions of Carnegie, of Schwab, substituting effi- 
ciency principles even for the intuitions of that 
great genius, J. Pierpont Morgan. 

The task before Judge Gary is a greater one 
than making steel, a greater one than harmoniz- 
ing the steel producers of America, of the 
world; it is to inculcate those principles that 
eliminate waste. 

It has often happened that in industrial 
plants where high efficiencies were being ob- 
tained, visitors confounding system with effi- 
ciency have come, have collected devices, cards 
and forms, have gone away supposing they had 
the secret of efficiency. It is as if a man should 
appropriate a lawyer's library and think this 
made him proficient in the law. There are mil- 
ions of devices, forms, cards ; no one can grasp 
them all, understand them all, and the chances 
are that not one of them will exactly fit in an 
untried place, even as no eye-glasses exactly 
suit any other pair of astigmatic eyes. 

When, however, all the devices and methods 



380 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

can be collected under a few heads — ten, twelve, 
fifteen ; when it is possible to show that a few 
principles cover all the possible devices — then 
the thinker can work backwards and ask him- 
self what devices or methods or plans has he 
that will maintain (for instance) ideals, or that 
will give him reliable, immediate, and adequate 
records. 

It is easy to test the efficiency of a plant 
because inefficiency is due to one of two causes. 
Either the principles of efficiency are not known, 
or they are not applied. If the principles are 
not used, high efficiency is impossible; if they 
are theoretically approved but not applied, high 
efficiency is also impossible. One of the main 
purposes of the principles is to give instru- 
ments of precision wherewith to test efficiency. 

In going into a plant, seeing the evidences of 
great inefficiency, the first step is to find out 
what is ; next, to set up standards ; then to in- 
sist on the use of the principles, first to test the 
administration, and then to direct the plant, 
knowing with absolute certainty that if they 
are applied by a valiant and competent man, 
standards will inevitably be attained. There is, 
of course, no absolute and final standard. The 
standard initially adopted is always one plainly 



THE CURE OF WASTES 381 

within sight, easily attained. A standard of 54 
miles an hour from New York to Chicago is at- 
tained today; it would have been ridiculous 
twenty years ago. A speed of 25 knots an hour 
across the ocean was planned for and attained 
by the Mauretania and Lusitania ; it would have 
been absurd in 1862, when the fastest steamer 
took 9 days and other good steamers were 12 to 
13 days on the ocean. 

Having ascertained what is, having set up 
standards, the plant manager and his counsel- 
lors ought not to go out and collect forms and 
devices and cards, ought not to install clocks 
and devices and checks, systems and methods, 
but ought to go into retirement and search their 
own minds and hearts and by some device or 
method test the extent to which they can ap- 
ply principles. A convenient device is to assign 
a score card to each principle, to draw on the 
card a checker-board of a hundred squares, and 
by marking out squares record his judgment 
and that of other experts as to the extent to 
which efficiency principles are being applied. 

The questions are not as to the number of 
employees, or whether the buildings are brick 
or wood, the equipment new or old, the em- 
ployees men or women, white or black, free or 



k i 



382 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

unionized, nor where the plant and what the 
product is ; but the first question is, "What are 
the ideals ?" 

To illustrate the method we can tentatively 
apply it to the greatest industrial corporation 
the world has ever seen — the United States 
Steel Corporation. From every point of view it 
ranks high, higher than most corporations. Or- 
ganized only ten years ago, it started with the 
ideals of 1901, and if we have any belief in 
progress these were higher than the prevailing 
standards when the Standard Oil Company was 
struggling to the front. There is as much differ- 
ence between the ruthless methods of the old 
Standard and the friendly dinners of Judge 
Gary as there is between the "eye for an eye" 
of the Old Testament and the Golden Rule of 
the New Testament. 

Twelve years ago the steel business of the 
country was greatly disorganized. Every man 
did what was good in his own eyes. There was 
always a feast or a famine, very profitable or 
very ruinous prices; it had become an axiom 
that the condition of the iron trade was an in- 
fallible barometer of general business condi- 
tions. Very able men, financiers, lawyers, 
great steel producers, combined to bring order 



THE CURE OF WASTES 383 

out of chaos, and the United States Steel 
Corporation was formed. It has been man- 
aged with great prudence and wisdom, perhaps 
with as great wisdom and prudence as indus- 
trial knowledge at that time made possible. 
It has recently been investigated and it is inter- 
esting to gather from the mass of testimony the 
ideals of both investigator and investigated. 

The ideals of the Corporation seem to have 
been: 

(1) Law abidence. 

(2) Rational publicity. 

(3) Steady prices at a high level. 

(4) Maximum tonnage. 

(5) Permanence for its own business by the 
purchase of large ore and coal reserves. 

(6) Rapid improvement of the properties so 
as to make them worth the capitalized value. 

(7) Maintenance of a high level of wages. 

(8) Identification of the worker with the 
profits of his work, thus increasing his interest 
in his occupation. 

These ideals are summed up by Judge Gary 
in a declaration in an address at Brussels to 
160 representatives of steel interests in Europe 
and America, in which he declared that "There 



384 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

should be established and continuously main- 
tained a business friendship which compels one 
to feel the same concern for his neighbor that 
he has for himself. It 'is nothing less in prin- 
ciple than the Golden Rule applied to business." 

Critics have carpingly suggested that the 
principle should be called 'The Golden Rule 
Limited" since it takes no account of mankind 
outside of steel. This is both unjust and nar- 
row. The actual price of anything is not im- 
portant, the relative price is, and even more im- 
portant is it that relative prices should not 
fluctuate but gradually sink compared to labor. 
It is the immense merit of the Corporation that 
it has maintained prices of products and com- 
pensation per hour of labor, also that by elimi- 
nating useless wastes in selling and in fighting 
competitors it has been able to make good the 
ideals of corporate value set up in 1901. 

The criticism ought not to be that it has elim- 
inated several hundred million dollars of waste 
without any detriment whatever to the Com- 
monwealth, but that it has not been able to 
eliminate more waste, and from the gain not 
only add to its own profits but also gradually 
lower price of products as measured in dollars, 
and increase the compensation, measured in dol- 



THE CURE OF WASTES 385 

lars, of efficient workers, thus doubly adding to 
the purchase power of wages efficiently earned. 

It will be interesting to use the United States 
Steel Corporation as a concrete example of the 
way the principles of efficiency might be of ser- 
vice to those who direct and administer large 
corporations. 

Waste elimination in production expense has 
not yet become one of the effective ideals of the 
Corporation. Does it cost less or more to pro- 
duce steel today than it did twelve or fifteen 
years ago? Is it not costing less per ton to 
transport freight, less per mile to transport 
passengers on the railroads, than it did fifteen 
years ago? Has the Steel Corporation attained 
a present rational low limit of cost of produc- 
tion ? If it is not applying systematically all the 
principles of efficiency to every minutest opera- 
tion, then naturally its costs are unduly high, 
and if it did apply these principles, its costs 
would be lower, with gain to all ! 

The Corporation has not applied the prin- 
ciples firstly because there were other vital and 
elementary problems more pressing, and sec- 
ondly because the principles had not yet been 
formulated and their value to a very limited 
and almost unknown extent been demonstrated 



386 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

by F. W. Taylor, H. L. Gantt, James M. Dodge, 
W. J. Power, E. E. Arison and many others. 

If the United States Steel Corporation were 
to be checked up by efficiency principles, ideals 
would be first formulated that would be of 
universal application, and the lesser ideals of 
the Corporation would be checked up in com- 
parison. By this test as to the first prin- 
ciple, Ideals, it would be given high credit for 
some, fair marks on others, and as to others it 
would be found very defective. It could not be 
otherwise, since there have been men highly 
connected with the Corporation in whom the 
public could not have any general moral confi- 
fidence either as to their comprehension or ex- 
ecution of ideals except of the lowest order. 
Tonnage, the shibboleth of steel production, is 
a low ideal working havoc in more ways than 
one. 

Taking the next square, Common Sense, the 
Corporation has steered a remarkably wise 
course along a channel beset with many difficul- 
ties and with the materials at hand wonders 
have been accomplished. The Corporation is 
vulnerable only to small degree for what it 
has done, but to a large degree for what it has 
not done. It is not by any means as up-to-date 



THE CURE OF WASTES 387 

as a modern American battleship which can 
concentrate repeated heavier salvo fires on a 
target at a greater distance in a shorter time 
than any other battleship in existence. 

The square of Competent Counsel. Here 
again there appears to be deficiency of omis- 
sion. Counsel has been taken in many direc- 
tions, legal, financial, political, technical, but in 
other directions competent counsel has neither 
been invoked nor secured because its need was 
not realized. 

In one Pittsburg shop there are fifty-six dif- 
ferent nationalities employed, men of many dif- 
ferent races. In London there has just met a 
Universal Races Congress with delegates from 
all nations and all the races in the world. (I 
know private American businesses that have 
sent members to this Races Congress in order 
to be better prepared to handle the race prob- 
lems that occur in American shops.) Is the 
Steel Corporation represented there? If not, 
how could it afford to miss the opportunity? 

Discipline and the Fair Deal, recognized as 
principles, have both been conspicuously in- 
sisted on, and both are intensely desired by the 
Corporation in spite of local murmurings and 
occasional sore spots, occurring solely because 



388 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

the principles have not been worked down far 
enough. 

When it comes to the application of the prin- 
ciples of Reliable, Immediate and Adequate 
Records and of Determination of Standards, the 
Corporation does not rank high because it is 
only a systematized business, not one scientifi- 
cally managed, because it has not yet emerged 
from the antiquated standards of accounting so 
beautifully developed by the Venetians shortly 
afer the adoption of Arabic numerals. The old 
principles of accounting plainly in evidence in 
a modern bank are three in number: (1) Des- 
tination; (2) authority; (3) balance. 

In a deposit bank it is imperative to know 
where to credit a deposit, the destination of the 
account ; it is so imperative to have proper au- 
thority for drawing out money that if a man's 
wife, or partner, or best friend attempted to 
check on his account the bank would be horri- 
fied and call on all the minions of the law to 
prevent and punish such sacrilege. The bank is 
happy when as to the whole and as to each ac- 
count there is balance. 

These ideals are fine, important and desir- 
able, but wholly inadequate. The bank does not 
care how the depositor acquired the money nor 



THE CURE OF WASTES 389 

how he spends it after it is withdrawn. Its 
supervision covers a very limited field. It is 
this limited field that corporation accounting 
has to date covered. It is not broad enough. 

In the Illinois Central Railroad car-repair 
frauds under which the road lost about $5,000,- 
000, destination was perfectly observed, for 
bills were charged to definite accounts ; also as 
to every voucher authority was forthcoming, 
each being approved by some official; finally 
there was perfect balance between vouchers and 
expenditures. When the frauds were revealed, 
President Harahan pathetically mourned that 
trusted friends had deceived him. 

The modern cost-accounting fundamentals 
are Standards, Efficiencies, Equivalents. The 
Lusitania in crossing the ocean steams a meas- 
ured number of miles, in a recorded time. To 
do this requires about 60,000 horse-power, each 
horse-power hour requires a pound and a half 
of coal. I know nothing of the records of the 
Lusitania, I. have never seen any of them, but 
off-hand I can estimate that it takes about 1,000 
tons a day to run the ship. This is a standard, 
not a record. 

There is, as to the Lusitania and all other 
large steamers in regular service on definite, 



390 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

fixed and measured courses, a predetermined 
standard of expense for coal; and against this 
standard, actual consumptions are checked, or 
may easily be checked for every voyage, closely 
compared, and keenly scrutinized. 

If the Illinois Central had had standards for 
car repairs, any standard — $31 per car per year 
as Turner attained on the Pittsburg and Erie; 
$35 per car per year as Van Alstyne attained 
on the Northern Pacific ; $42 per car per year 
as some railroads might think sufficient; $56 
per car, an amount that any competent investi- 
gation will show to be too much; $70 per car 
per year, about the average of all the railroads 
— then the Illinois Central cost at the rate of 
$140 per car per year would have shown the 
following efficiencies according to the different 
standards : 

Standard Cost Efficiency at 

per Car $140 per 

per Year.* Car per Year. 

$31 22 per cent 

$35 25 per cent 

$42 30 per cent 

$56 40 per cent 

$70 50 per cent 

and there would have been instant inquiry by 
officials, by Wall Street, by shareholders, by 



* Repairs per freight car owned is a defective unit, but the illus- 
tration holds good, as any other unit, repairs per car mile, would 
still show Turner and Van Alstyne in the lead, the Illinois Central 
far behind. 



THE CURE OF WASTES 391 

Interstate Commerce Commission, by rivals and 
critics, as to the why and wherefore of the low 
efficiencies, as to the absence of equivalence be- 
tween moneys spent and results obtained. 

The United States Steel Corporation has rec- 
ords of productive cost which it may think are 
standards, but they are not; they are mere 
records of what has been accomplished in the 
past, and there is absolutely no direct connec- 
tion between what has been and what ought to 
be. Records grope in the past, standards reach [ 
into the future, ultimate standards are always ' 
ahead of what has ever been. Practical stand- 
ards hang like stalactites from the roof of ideal 
standards, records are built up like stalagmites 
from the floor of actual performance ; it is only 
when stalactite tip and stalagmite tip join and 
fuse that both become a column of efficiency 
strength. Does the Steel Corporation know as 
to every detail what ought to be as well as it 
knows what has been? If it does not, it is 1 
merely systematized; it cannot measure its 
losses, and where there is no standard there is 
inevitably waste, and very great waste. 

We next consider the application of the prin- 
ciples of Standardized Conditions and Stand- 
ardized Operations. Are conditions standard- 



392 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

ized to the same extent as in a railroad track, 
as in railroad cars and locomotives, always 
maintained in a high degree of efficient repair, 
because life is at stake if they are not? 

Poor belting, poor abrasive wheels, poorly 
maintained machines, delayed deliveries of ma- 
terial, do not endanger life in the operation of 
an industrial plant; therefore nobody cares 
very much, and because nobody cares, because 
no alarm clock goes off, lax and slack conditions 
prevail. It is not even necessary to prove that 
laxity and slackness exist; the legitimate as- 
sumption is that they do unless the contrary is 
proven. 

An eight-year-old child who has never been 
to school presumably cannot read, and to pre- 
vent arrest by the truant officer proof of effi- 
ciency has to be furnished by the parent to the 
municipal authorities. So with corporations 
who have not learned the alphabet of efficiency. 
In the Corporation have single operations been 
standardized, not only the centralized, super- 
vised and oft-repeated operations, but also the 
decentralized, unsupervised, occasional opera- 
tion? 

Continual hammering on the same spike will 
ultimately sink it into very hard wood, it is an 



THE CURE OF WASTES 393 

oft-repeated operation; but it is much harder 
to throw a stone straight. Therefore we ham- 
mer as did prehistoric men ; the operation was 
almost as perfect then as now; but we have 
had to develop a staff of thirty men working all 
together to standardize such an unusual opera- 
tion as throwing a 1,000-pound shot at an en- 
emy's vessel. 

Has the Steel Corporation so standardized 
conditions and operations as to enable it to 
draw up Standard-Practice Instructions cover- 
ing ail details? No one standardizes without 
reducing the standards to written form. The 
object of surveys is to make maps, more or 
less elaborate, that all may profit. If there are 
no maps of a region it is safe to assume that 
there are few and imperfect surveys. By its 
collection of standard-practice instructions the 
Steel Corporation could demonstrate its effi- 
ciency status, whether very elementary or far 
advanced. With a good chart in his hands one 
captain can replace another without danger 
even in risky waters. In industrial plants most 
of the charts are under some foreman's or 
worker's hat, and it would not be possible (as 
it ought to be) , without loss, to walk in a new 
industrial army, privates and officers, and take 
up interrupted work, without delay or loss. 



394 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

As to the next principle, Despatching, it is 
undoubtedly applied by the Corporation on a 
wholesale scale but not in detail. Large steam- 
ers laden with ore are regularly despatched 
from the far end of Lake Superior to the lower 
end of Lake Erie. Big apparatus is used for 
loading and unloading these steamers; but is 
each scoopful handled with the maximum of 
efficiency? As railroads have found out, it is 
quite as important to despatch passengers into 
trains and out of them again as to despatch the 
trains. In the despatching of minor operations 
all except standardized industrial concerns are 
weak. 

Finally we come to the principle of Efficiency 
Reward. As to every human effort, for the 
highest result and for joyful, healthful effort, 
three conditions must prevail : 

(1) There must be pleasure in the work; it 
must be a game, not a task; it must be what 
learning to ride on a bicycle or learning to skate 
is to a boy, or learning to dance is to a girl, or 
playing golf is to the elderly business man, or 
auto speeding to the automobile driver. 

(2) There must be a definite end in view, a 
definite accomplishment in a given time, not a 
vague, never-ending grind. 



THE CURE OF WASTES 395 

We are not accustomed to endless day or end- 
less night; both are depressing, and so also is 
a perfect unchanging climate or sea. Men 
want change, always change, the sting of the 
blizzard with the certainty of the broil of the 
camp fire at the end of the tramp. The ordi- 
nary man will scarcely hold his breath a full 
minute, but if trained by a single lesson and 
nerved to a definite task, timing himself, he can 
hold his breath for a minute and a half, for 
two minutes, for three minutes, or even for 
four. He acquires form. 

(3) Form is the third requisite for easy, 
graceful, pleasurable work. Compare the 
skilled skater with the novice, compare the 
skilled man riding horse or bicycle, scarcely a 
muscle in use, with the frantic efforts of the 
learner, compare the dexterity of the juggler 
with the clumsiness of the imitator. 

The Steel Corporation has installed the plan, 
the duty of profit sharing, but has it recognized 
the principle of Efficiency Reward in the great 
army of its workers ? Has it set up a standard 
task in a standard time? Is there immense joy 
in each one's work? Is there perfected form in 
doing the work? 

Minimum effort put forth in best form to at- 



396 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

tain a standard in definite time gives the joy of 
work, and this joy is added to the pleasure of 
securing the special reward for proficiency. 
Are these the conditions under which the steel 
workers labor? If not, the workers cannot be 
efficient and wastes are occurring. 

Whether we check up the making of a pin 
and its cost or the operations for a decade of 
the greatest corporation in the world, the same 
methods can be applied to reveal weaknesses 
and to show the need of special remedies. The 
principles of efficiency are to the industrial 
plant what the principles of hygiene are to life. 
If man, woman or child does not have constant- 
ly changing air of sufficient purity, an abund- 
ance of good food and water, plenty of exercise 
as well as rest and sleep, constant keen inter- 
ests and sudden changes, health will suffer, no 
matter what the occupation. 

No matter what the occupation, no act is 
efficient if the principles on which efficiency is 
based are lacking. 

Franklin collected thirteen principles to 
cover the small amenities of daily life. They 
were: Temperance, silence, order, resolution, 
frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, modera- 
tion, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, humility. 



THE CURE OF WASTES 397 

Each week he picked out one and practiced it 
diligently, thus creating a habit. Each year 
he practiced each one a full week in each quar- 
ter, thus covering them all four times each year. 
He kept this up for many years. The uncouth 
Franklin of early manhood who found fault 
with his wife for giving him a silver spoon and 
a china bowl for his bread and milk instead of 
a pewter spoon and earthenware crock, devel- 
oped into the statesman and man of the world 
who won the respect of Englishmen, the ad- 
miration of Frenchmen, and the gratitude of 
Americans. In a similar way ought the prin- 
ciples of efficiency to be applied and reapplied. 



XVI 

EXECUTIVE CONTROL OF LINE AND 

STAFF 



The longer I live the more I am certain that the 
great difference between men, between the feeble and 
the powerful, the great and the insignificant, is energy 
— invincible determination — a purpose once fixed, and 
then death or victory. That quality will do anything 
that can be done in this world; and no talents, no cir- 
cumstances, no opportunities, will make a two-legged 
creature a man without it. — Sir Thomas Fowell Bux- 
ton. 

Pharaoh demanded bricks without straw. Christ 
did not expect figs from thistles. 

Shall we expect a man to be either contented, 
skilled or happy at work for which he is not fitted? 
— Dr. Katherine M. H. Blackford. 



Chapter XVI 

EXECUTIVE CONTROL OF LINE AND 

STAFF 

INDUSTRIAL plants remind me of automo- 
biles. The plants themselves may be more 
or less good, but on what kind of roads 
are they running? The philosophy of efficiency 
is for an industrial plant — for any enterprise, 
activity, or undertaking — what a network of 
good roads is for automobiles. Undoubtedly 
even on poor roads automobiles may make some 
progress ; but the worse the road, the more ele- 
mentary must be the means of locomotion. 

Railroads, high roads, bye-roads, bridle 
paths, foot paths, mountain climbs ! The unlet- 
tered mountaineer of all countries is the best 
man for the latter, and it takes the best kind 
of trained climbing expert to emulate him ; but 
as the road is improved shoes are exchanged 
for horses, horses for bicycles, a change from 
one kind of muscular effort to another, bicycles 

401 



402 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

for automobiles, automobiles for railroad trains, 
both these latter using uncarnate energy in- 
stead of muscular or incarnate energy. The 
all-around skill of the mountaineer becomes the 
subdivided, specialized skill of many different 
men who are supplemented with increasingly 
complex equipment. 

The philosophy of efficiency is to be used to 
build roads along which any organization can 
travel with the least friction and the greatest 
advantage, and the more ramified and involved 
the business the more is the philosophy needed. 

However, no highly complex automobile, 
even with the best network of roads, can make 
any great progress unless in the hands of a 
skilled directing intelligence — no highly com- 
plex human enterprise, though it uses all the 
principles of efficiency, can make any great 
progress unless guided by a skilled intelligence. 

I remember a large manufacturing concern 
whose superintendent, a man of great energy, 
ambition, magnetism, had married the daugh- 
ter of the owner and in time succeeded to the 
direction and management. The old plant was 
in smooth working order, its old employees had 
worn paths from their homes to their machines ; 
routine, evolved and worn into a groove by 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 403 

many years of practice, made anything more 
than ordinary directing intelligence unneces- 
sary. The superintendent, becoming president, 
resolved to build a modern plant in a new place, 
to equip it with up-to-date motor-driven tools. 
He did not know that he was tearing up the 
old foot paths and providing no new roads for 
his complex machine to run on. At the time 
of the move he scrapped not only intentionally 
the old buildings and the old equipment, but 
also unwittingly all the ingrained habits and 
routine of a generation. The old employees no 
longer automatically traveled from home to 
plant, no longer automatically acted as the cogs 
in the well oiled machine. They had to go sev- 
eral miles from their homes, over roads and 
by means that were new, to enter a strange 
plant where nothing was familiar, and to at- 
tempt work on new-fangled machines. Instead 
of jogging through the day like well trained car 
horses, stopping and starting at the jingle of 
the bell, they had to stop and take thought for 
every movement. The plant drifted financially 
down-stream like a steamer with broken engines 
caught in a tide bore. Earnings fell off a mil- 
lion and a half, and then the president, discov- 
ering the situation, told me that in making the 



404 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

change he had foreseen five-years loss before 
he could be back to the excellence of the old 
plant. Perhaps he had foreseen it ; but in that 
case, instead of being merely enthusiastic and 
inexperienced, he was little better than crim- 
inal; for, to foresee is to prevent, and as he 
supplied new and better buildings before he 
scrapped the old ones, as he installed new and 
better machines before he scrapped the old 
ones, so even to greater degree was it his duty 
to provide something to take the place of the 
old and scrapped routine — and that something 
was a modern controlling organization based 
on the philosophy of efficiency, an organization 
in which the president would have been great 
in proportion to his ability to serve and aid 
even the smallest tool in its work, and thus 
make it possible for the routine man, for the 
machines, to do their best. Because as a presi- 
dent he failed to realize his duties, his men 
worked listlessly two-thirds of the time on ma- 
chines geared up to half -capacity, and his whole 
plant floundered along at scarcely 30 per cent 
efficiency. 

The best plant in the world, the best philoso- 
phy of efficiency, will in themselves make no 
better combination than a good automobile on 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 405 

a network of perfect roads, with nobody to 
handle the starting and steering wheel. The 
most picturesque figure in all railroading is the 
locomotive engineer. In vain, back in the thir- 
ties, did a masterful conductor on what is now 
a part of the Erie system thrash a disobedient 
engineer into subjection and thus for all time 
in America establish the conductor's suprem- 
acy, a supremacy neither recognized nor exist- 
ing in Europe; in vain do civil engineers im- 
prove roadbeds, tracks, bridges and terminals ; 
in vain do builders make marvelous locomotives 
and more marvelous cars; in vain do general 
managers make schedules, do train despatchers 
issue orders, signal men turn switches ; in vain 
do giants of finance combine roads into systems 
and systems into aggregations ; trains could not 
run without the engineer in the cab, the man 
who slows up when the cow lingers on the 
track, who stops or smashes through according 
to his own instantaneous resolve when the ban- 
dit has piled obstructions on the track, who 
senses the signals rather than sees them in the 
stormy night, who, an hour behind at the start, 
runs into the terminal on time. After all the 
elaborate rules and regulations have been 
drafted, tried out, revised, and promulgated, 



406 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

there is inserted for the benefit of the engineer 
a saving clause absolving I lm from literal ob- 
servance of any rule : "When in doubt pursue 
the safe course." If a runaway engine were 
overtaking his train, if a bridge were sinking 
beneath him into a swollen river, the engineer 
would run past any red light or block signal; 
and it is because of the ultimate supreme neces- 
sity of relying on the man, not on the machine, 
that railroad men are reluctant to substitute 
automatic train stoppers for the brain of the 
engineer. Other officials can doze at their 
posts, but the engineer must be wide awake and 
on his job every second of the time. 

It was von Moltke using the staff to guide 
the line, not the mere fact of staff, that made 
first the Prussian and then the German armies 
invincible. It was Japanese intelligence that 
first enabled them to adopt line and staff, and 
later to use line and staff for victories even 
more momentous than those of Germany over 
France, for in the last two-thousand years 
many times has Teuton, many times Gaul and 
Latin been in the ascendant, different clans of 
the white race, in fierce but brotherly rioting 
with each other. Quite different was the strug- 
gle when Charles Martel turned back the Mo- 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 407 

hammedan African invasion of Europe on the 
field of Chalons, quite different when 940 years 
later Sobieski turned back the Mohammedan 
Asiatic conquest of Europe, and also quite dif- 
ferent was the victory of Oriental over Slav at 
Tsushima and on the plains of Manchuria — a 
victory not of religion and race, but of efficiency 
over incompetency, of adaptable civilization and 
progress over feudal beliefs and reactions. 
Even as the cantons of Switzerland, the prov- 
inces of France, the American colonies, the in- 
dependent States of Germany, the petty king- 
doms and duchies of Italy, combined into united 
nations — even as the triple and dual alliances of 
Europe have combined for common civilizing 
action discordant and hostile races, so may we 
hope that the rise of Japan, the awakening of 
China, will enable West and East to combine 
for the advancement of a common humanity, a 
hope of which the first realization is the meet- 
ing just held in London of a Universal Races 
Congress, a meeting that above all else needed 
a master's guidance. 

On personality, on the wisdom of the indi- 
vidual, whether locomotive engineer or von 
Moltke, whether the manager of a plant em- 
ploying ten men or Judge Gary, chairman of 



408 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

the board of the gigantic Steel Corporation, will 
depend the ultimate value of all that creative 
physical or philosophical ability has brought 
together. 

Recently there was submitted to me in the 
office of one of Chicago's greatest businesses, 
the draft of its organization. No man can pass 
on the merits of the details of a complicated 
organization without long and intimate ac- 
quaintance with its workings. Seeing the plan 
of the Chicago plant, pressed for a suggestion, 
I said, "Your chart is upside down; the presi- 
dent belongs at the bottom, sustaining and 
carrying, through his organization, all the 
operations of the plant. Because he is in su- 
preme authority he has the responsibility of 
making available for every one, down to the 
tool, all the wisdom in the universe in order 
that each may fulfil perfectly its special duty 
and task." 

Shortly after there was laid before me the 
chart of organization and operation of a great 
city which was attempting to substitute effi- 
ciency of civic administration for graft, self- 
seeking and party advantage. Again comments 
were called for, and again without intimate 
knowledge of conditions how could any of value 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 409 

be made? According to the chart there were 
various departments of civic activity, police, 
schools, fire-protection, water, streets, etc. 
These were the various lines, each separate and 
distinct from the other like the threads of the 
woof. Across them were to be woven the 
threads of the various staffs, engineering, ac- 
counting, law, hygiene, efficiency, etc. The ad- 
mirable theory was that instead of each line de- 
partment having its own engineer, its own sys- 
tem of accounting, its own legal counsel, its own 
efficiency engineer, etc., there should be a staff 
counsellor from each branch of knowledge, law, 
engineering, accounting, hygiene, efficiency — 
to advise all line departments. The plan was 
ideal ; the woof of line, the warp of staff, would 
weave into a beautiful and strong piece of 
cloth ; but who was to cut the cloth into a gar- 
ment fit to wear? The weakness of the scheme 
lies in the strong human qualities of the vari- 
ous line and staff officials, and the stronger and 
more able these men are, the more trouble will 
arise. In the Middle Ages the little German 
and Italian States were constantly warring 
with each other. Lucky the peasant whose hold- 
ing lay well toward the center of a small State 
— at worse he was robbed of all he possessed by 



410 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

his own kind lord; but if his holding was on 
the border, all his lord's enemies made a special 
point of harrying him, killing and destroying 
as well as robbing. Different lines are like the 
different feudal States; each, especially as to 
border lands, is fighting with all its neighbors. 
The street commissioner, after long research 
and experiment, lays what he hopes will be a 
model pavement, and before it has been open to 
traffic a month the water bureau tears it up to 
lay water mains. In running to a fire the fire 
department violates all the speed ordinances and 
police regulations; and the less important a 
prerogative is, the more it is insisted on as the 
visible sign of special privilege. Departmental 
lines are difficult enough to harmonize. In the 
usual industrial concerns the purchasing agent, 
the storekeeper, the order department, the 
manufacturer, the shipper, are all at war with 
each other, the stereotyped excuse being that 
the other fellow was responsible. 

When into this family of Kilkenny cats the 
staff hounds are let loose, then indeed does fur 
begin to fly. 

Each separate staff man is regarded as an 
invading enemy by each and every line head, 
and all the lines will combine against all the 






EXECUTIVE CONTROL 411 

staff. Even if many of the men are amiable, 
sensible, patient, the conditions leading to dis- 
cord and trouble are constant. The staff special- 
ists constitute even a greater problem than the 
line heads, because as yet their duties and lim- 
itations are not so clearly defined. The ac- 
countant has mathematical convictions about 
the correctness of his tie-up with the laws of 
the universe, and because accounting, definite 
and accurate, is older than most other sciences, 
because it has made possible banking and mer- 
chandizing on a large scale, he starts in, full of 
enthusiasm, to impose his records on the vari- 
ous lines. These do not understand accounting ; 
they have all the practical man's contempt for 
clerical entries and diagrams, they feel as did a 
tall friend of mine who over the shoulder 
watched an accountant figure up the contents 
of a coal pile and misplace a decimal. There 
was about 11 tons in the pile, the accountant 
made it 117, the seller promptly claimed 120 
and compromised on 115. Another episode 
nearly forty years old comes to mind in which 
the eastern expert was to tally ties delivered by 
a contractor to the Union Pacific Railroad. 
They gave him a seat in the shade, they fur- 
nished sharp pencils and convenient pads, they 



412 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

showed him the heavy branding sledge with the 
raised letters "U P" on its face, they bade him 
watch the hefty navvy indent the letters in the 
end of a tie, and then on one side of the pile 
the talesman sat tallying each resounding blow, 
while on the other side the navvy pounded into 
the earth the stump of a burr oak and one or 
two ties in addition. What wonder that the 
rails and ties paid for were twice as many as 
required for the length of the road ! 

The practical man has often evolved for him- 
self accounting methods of control, crude but 
eminently practical, and he bitterly resents the 
imposition of elaborate methods which do not 
aid control. There develops a festering petty 
antagonism between directing line and record- 
ing staff which vitiates the records. Suddenly 
into this hostility the efficiency expert injects 
his specialty. He exclaims that he wants stand- 
ards, records of efficiency (i.e., the relation be- 
tween standard and actual) , and that he wants 
to convert efficiencies into money equivalents. 
The crude records of the practical man do not 
suffice, although they may form an excellent 
foundation on which to build. Still less can 
the efficiency engineer use the elaborate records 
of the accountant, since these do not tie in to 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 413 

efficiencies, do not give the check of equivalent. 
Over the lively and vigorous body of the line 
man the two experts wage their battle. Either 
records must be duplicated at useless expense 
and with added aggravation to all concerned, 
or one or the other must give way. In the 
meantime from the rear, the line man adminis- 
ters resounding whacks at both combatants, 
hoping that they will exterminate each other 
and leave him in peace. Suddenly the legal de- 
partment comes along and advises both account- 
ing and efficiency expert that their plans lack 
legality, that women cannot be worked on shifts 
of seven hours for ten hours' pay, because it in- 
volves one shift or the other working after 6 
p. m., and this is against the law in Massachu- 
setts. 

For these clashes of line with line as to au- 
thority, of staff with staff as to knowledge and 
plans, for these clashes of each member of the 
line with each separate member of the staff, 
there is only one remedy — namely, the strong, 
governing and controlling executive, who need 
not be an expert in either staff or line, but who 
must have those qualities that fit him to direct, 
to harmonize, to convert a closed parallelogram 
of forces into an open straight line along which 



414 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

all forces are summed in the same direction. 
Everywhere this executive ability is needed. 

It is much harder to manage a sledge team 
of eight dogs than it is to drive an equine four- 
in-hand, especially in starting in the morning. 
Sledge and eight harnesses have been strung 
out for an early start, the dogs have been given 
their single daily meal the night before. Very 
early a single dog is unchained and led forth 
and put in his harness, but by the time the sec- 
ond dog is fetched, the first dog has been look- 
ing for several imaginary fleas and tangled him- 
self up hopelessly. Chaining dog two to the 
sledge, dog one is disentangled and dog two 
harnessed and strung in front of him. Dog 
three is then gone after, and while the driver is 
away dog one and two undertake to settle some 
grudges that have lasted over from the previous 
day. For the third time dog one has to be 
reharnessed and straightened out, for the 
second time dog two, and dog two and dog 
three strung in front. Happily dog three is 
quiet and peaceful, seems well manneredly busy 
with some minor affair of his own. Dog four is 
brought up, and then it is discovered that dog 
three has chewed one of his traces into bits and 
a new piece has to be spliced in — no pleasure at 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 415 

5 a. m., with the thermometer 55 below zero, 
and the night camp 48 miles away ! With each 
successive dog there is some fresh trouble ; the 
hitching up and starting is the hardest part of 
the day's work. Trotting along hour after hour 
at 5 miles an hour over a well worn trail is 
rather enjoyable than otherwise. There is no 
inducement to stop and by noon 30 miles have 
been covered, by six o'clock 50 miles. 

Recently I visited the Long Branch Horse 
Show and watched the mail coaches, the four- 
in-hands. How smart everything was! Ap- 
pointments counted for much in awarding the 
ribbons. The harnesses were nobby, the horses 
sleek and high-stepping, the guard tooted his 
long horn, the driver held the reins just so, the 
cock-horse with his single-tree hooked to the 
saddle, galloped behind, ready to help at the 
imaginary hills. It was all beautifully smart, 
with that typical smartness which has made 
the English leaders in many things from table 
etiquette up to manoeuvring battleships. 

As I watched the fine turnouts, I recalled an 
earlier scene on the sage-brush deserts of the 
far West. Darkness coming on, a lumbering 
mail stage hung on leather springs, a paddock 
filled with wild, unbroken broncos! Eight 



416 ' THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

horses roped and thrown, the rough harness 
buckled onto them somehow, their heads cov- 
ered with grain bags! They were hooked by- 
main strength to the dingy old stage, the bags 
were pulled off their heads, a pistol shot 
cracked and in a mad frenzy of rage and panic 
they plunged ahead. The driver's two tasks 
were to keep them on the jump and to keep 
them on the dark trail. Wild-eyed and madly 
they galloped at full speed for an hour, to bring 
up frothing and exhausted at the next station. 
The performance was not smart, it was rough 
and crude and primitive, but, Oh, it was driv- 
ing ! With a little practice this master of horses 
could have cut a figure eight with the English 
coach and high steppers, holding the ribbons in 
one hand, but also the immaculate driver at 
Long Branch could have learned in as short a 
time to handle the eight ponies through the 
dark night. He also was a master driver. It 
was the son of a lord who drove an automobile 
1,535 miles in 24 hours and who later lost his 
life, one of the first of the aviators. 

Whether on the grounds of Long Branch, on 
the desert trail, in a section, department, divi- 
sion, or plant of a great manufacturing con- 
cern or railroad, whether on the deck of a bat- 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 417 

tleship, or on a battlefield, what is wanted is a 
leader who can swing and manage what has 
been entrusted to him. 

In 1896, after six years of agricultural de- 
pression, after three years of financial distress, 
a tribune of the people suddenly united western 
and southern Democrats and secured also the 
support of one million populists. He had no or- 
ganization or money, but in the west and south 
he piled up twelve-hundred thousand more 
votes, in the country as a whole nine-hundred- 
and-fifty thousand more votes, than the pre- 
viously easily elected Cleveland. Then in the 
Republican party's hour of distress arose a 
man, a matchless organizer, for the sake of his 
friend and for the sake of his party politically 
absolutely unscrupulous, to whom votes were a 
mere matter of organization and money, and 
with a slush fund of thirteen million dollars 
(levied mostly from corporations) the cam- 
paign was organized. In different States single 
weak spots were picked out — Oakland in Cali- 
fornia, Portland in Oregon, eleven odd spots in 
Ohio, and when the farce of an election was 
over Mark Hanna had the count, McKinley ap- 
parently having received 1,548,246 more votes 
than his immediate predecessor. This election 



418 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

showed, as few other events have ever shown, 
what one man, a supreme planner and execu- 
tive, can do when he has made up his mind. It 
is a comfort to turn from the skill shown in dis- 
graceful party rivalry to a nobler executive 
skill. A reciprocity treaty is attempted between 
two great contiguous countries, each with over 
3,000,000 miles of territory. Each separate 
member of a House and of a Senate has his 
own views as to the subject, its probably little 
effect on some little special interest of some 
little home supporter, all important to the po- 
litical fortunes of the member. The quiet and 
judicial Taft, with no legislative functions, sits 
through the sweltering summer months at 
Washington and straightens out his line and 
staff, and the bill is finally passed. Had there 
been no strong executive there would have 
been no favorable American action on reciproc- 
ity with Canada. 

The chairman of the board of the Steel Cor- 
poration is a lawyer, not a manufacturer nor 
yet an expert as to any steel or other manufac- 
turing process, but he is an expert in control- 
ling men; and the great corporation, taking 
perhaps a generation to eliminate losses that 
ought to be eliminated in five years, neverthe- 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 419 

less develops and grows. The panic of 1907 was 
stayed not because it had spent its force, not 
because of the resources of great banking 
houses, but because one strong and capable man 
took the situation in hand, gathered into the 
library of his private house a hundred or more 
leading men, and by his executive ability 
brought order out of impending chaos. 

It has become the fashion in history to decry 
the strong-man theory, to turn for understand- 
ing to evolution, to explain the strong man as 
the inevitable accident of the moment. There 
is evolution, there comes at last opportunity, 
but only rarely does the strong man arise; 
hence we have England, not Norway or Sweden 
or Holland; hence we have Prussia, not Sax- 
ony ; Germany, not Russia ; Italy, not Portugal ; 
France, not Spain; Japan, not Siam or Korea. 

In 1536 was born in Japan an undersized, 
monkey-faced boy of good but poor parentage, 
who at the age of thirteen resolved to make 
himself the chief power in the distracted king- 
dom. For 200 years the militant barons had 
warred against each other, each trying to grab, 
annex, and hold what he could. 

The boy, Hideyoshi, deliberately visited the 
different courts, picked out the baron he 



420 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

thought most endowed with suitable character, 
succeeded with great difficulty in entering his 
service in the humblest position, and then 
steadily and inevitably rose, firstly because he 
could read human character and always knew 
almost as soon as they did themselves what his 
and his lord's enemies were plotting, and sec- 
ondly because he was always prepared in ad- 
vance for any undertaking and skilled in car- 
rying out. Thus, when scarcely more than a 
child, he reduced the cost of firewood used in 
the palace to less than one-half; a little later 
he rebuilt the castle walls in three days, a task 
estimated as requiring sixty days; again, sin- 
gle-handed, he secured provinces that armies 
had failed to conquer. 

By gifts of tact, of insight, of diligence, of 
readiness that each one of us thinks he pos- 
sesses, that any one of Nipon's 30,000,000 in- 
habitants might have possessed and exercised, 
Hideyoshi arose step by step, until he directed 
and guided the whole country, his general 
Iyeyasu becoming the first of the Tokugawa 
dynasty which lasted from 1603 to 1867, with 
headquarters at Yeddo (Tokyo). 

Temuchin, Jenghis Khan, born in a tent in 
1162, son of a petty Mongolian chieftain, sue- 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 421 

ceeded his father when only 13 years old. Many 
of the tribes immediately rebelled, but Te- 
muchin held his own in battle and in counsel 
against open enemies and insidious traitors, 
until his empire extended from the China Sea 
to the frontier of Poland — an empire larger 
than modern Russia, the largest the world has 
ever seen. 

Neither Alexander's, nor Caesar's, nor Char- 
lemagne's, nor Jenghis Kahn's, nor Timur's, 
nor Napoleon's empire endured. Personality \ 
alone is not sufficient. 

The tumult and the shouting dies, 
The Captains and the Kings depart. 

Organization alone is not sufficient, equip- , 
ment alone is not sufficient. 

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 

I think that it was Bernard Shaw who wrote 
years ago that both Capital and Labor were 
powerless unless the man of ability conde- 
scended to use them. It was less than a half 
truth, for he magnified the importance of both 
Capital and Labor. More recent and less bril- 
liant writers state with conviction and assump- 
tion of authority that all wealth comes from 



422 THE PRINCIPLES OF EFFICIENCY 

Land, Labor, and Capital. Wealth comes not 
from without, but from within. Caruso singing 
for his pleasure draws $5,000 a night! A wo- 
man finds that her favor brings her a million 
dollars or an imperial crown! Ideals create 
wealth. What gives value to gold, to diamonds ? 
What makes a square foot of land in parts of 
New York worth $1,000, other square feet in 
exactly the same locality not being considered 
of any value? Why is $500,000 (the value of a 
good-size industrial plant) paid for less than $5 
cost of canvas and paint? The man of supreme 
ability is the one who has supernal ideals, who 
recognizes and uses those underlying principles 
without which human effort is futile, its re- 
sults ephemeral. The man of supreme ability 
is the one who can create and control an organ- 
ization founded on and using principles to at- 
tain and maintain ideals, who then is able to 
assemble for the use of his organization the in- 
cidentals of land, of men, and money (Labor 
and Capital), of buildings and equipment, of 
methods and devices. All these incidentals 
make for volume, for quantity, for man's work 
instead of woman's work, but they do not make 
for the spirit, nor for the quality, nor for the 
excellence of work. 



EXECUTIVE CONTROL 423 

What would not the physical properties of 
the Steel Corporation be worth if they were 
but instruments to supplement supernal men 
working through principles to realize supernal 
ideals ? Moreover, if because of the hardness of 
their hearts, spiritual and ethical rewards are 
too remote to prove incentives, there are other 
and nearer rewards. Wastes, physical as well 
as spiritual, being eliminated, intelligence be- 
ing prodigally lavished, time and money, efforts 
and materials being conserved, the cost of pro- 
duct will fall, thereby increasing the demand ; 
more men will each receive more money in 
wages, thus still further increasing the demand 
for products; higher dividends will be paid, 
which will still further stimulate construction 
requiring steel. 

It is impossible that righteousness married 
to wisdom should rule without immensely bene- 
fitting humanity. 



For heathen heart that puts her trust 

In reeking tube and iron shard, 
All valiant dust that builds on dust 

And guarding calls not Thee to guard — 
For frantic boast and foolish word, 

Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord! 

The End. 

x 



EFFICIENCY 

AS A BASIS FOR 

OPERATION AND WAGES 

By Harrington Emerson 

MR. EMERSON'S book is not merely the develop- 
ment of a theory of works management. It 
is the statement of principles applied and re- 
sults secured in practice. The methods advocated are 
being used in some of the largest manufacturing and 
operating institutions in the United States. They have 
proved their worth and practicality by resultant sav- 
ings amounting in the aggregate to millions of dollars 
annually, as proved by the balance sheets of corpora- 
tions making official report of their earnings and ex- 
penses. This volume contains the fullest, and indeed 
the first complete, statement made of the Efficiency or 
Individual-Effort system. 

CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS 

I. Typical Inefficiencies and Their Significance. 
II. National Efficiencies: Their Tendencies and In- 
fluence. 

III. The Strength and Weakness of Existing Sys- 

tems of Organization. 

IV. Line and Staff Organization in Industrial Con- 

cerns. 
V. Standards: Their Relations to Organizations 
and to Results. 
VI. The Realization of Standards in Practice. 
VII. The Modern Theory of Cost Accounting. 
VIII. The Location and Elimination of Wastes. 
IX. The Efficiency System in Operation. 
X. Standard Times and Bonus. 
XL What the Efficiency System May Accomplish. 
XII. The Gospel of Efficiency. 

252 pages, 12mo, Cloth Binding, $2.00 Prepaid 

THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE 

140-142 Nassau Street, New York, U. S. A. 



TWELVE PRINCIPLES 
of EFEICIENCY 

By Harrington Emerson 

HARRINGTON EMERSON'S earlier book ("Effi- 
ciency as a Basis for Operation and Wages"), 
while thoroughly practical, is essentially the 
statement of a philosophy — a new view of the total in- 
dustrial problem and the relations and proportions of 
the factors that enter into it. 

This later volume, stronger even than the former, 
and more specific in statement, is a reduction of the 
doctrine of efficiency to practice. Emerson discovers 
twelve principles by which efficiency is determined. 
These twelve principles are so definite, so constant, so 
true, that they may be used as gauges. 

CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS 
I. The Organization Which Makes Efficiency Pos- 
sible. 
II. How Efficiency Organization Differs from the 
Old Type. 

III. First Principle: Clearly Defined Ideals. 

IV. Second Principle: Common-Sense. 

V. Third Principle: Competent Counsel. 

VI. Fourth Principle: Discipline. 

VII. Fifth Principle: The Fair Deal. 

VIII. Sixth Principle: Reliable, Immediate and Ade- 
quate Records. 

IX. Seventh Principle: Despatching. 

X. Eighth Principle: Standards and Schedules. 

XI. Ninth Principle: Standardized Conditions. 

XII. Tenth Principle: Standardized Operations. 

XIII. Eleventh Principle: Written Standard-Practice 

Instructions. 

XIV. Twelfth Principle: Efficiency Reward 
XV. The Measurement and Cure of Wastes. 

XVI. The Executive of an Efficient Organization. 

12mo, lfl6 pages, Cloth Binding, $2.00 

THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE 

140-142 Nassau Street, New York, U. S. A. 



WORK, WAGES, 

and PROFITS 

BY H. L. Gantt 

THIS book is a complete explanation of Mr. Gantt's 
practice in reducing production costs. He shows 
the reasons on which his system is based, details 
the methods he uses, and exhibits the results obtained 
in a large number of cases. In this last connection 
many colored charts are presented, showing graphically 
the working of the bonus system in various factories. 
These alone would make the book invaluable for study 
and reference. 

Mr. Gantt takes up the ordinary wage systems, show- 
ing logically and clearly why day-work and piece-work 
fail to promote efficiency. Then he proceeds to discuss 
"Task- Work with a Bonus," and defines clearly the four 
elements involved in it — Expert Investigation, Standard 
Methods, Proper Instructions, Sufficient Compensation. 
He describes each step necessary in introducing the 
plan, and everything essential to success in its intro- 
duction. 

CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS 

I. The Application of the Scientific Method to the 

Labor Problem. 
II. The Utilization of Labor. 

III. The Compensation of Workmen. 

IV. Day Work. 
V. Piece Work. 

VI. Task Work with Bonus. 
VII. Training Workmen in Habits of Industry and 

Co-operation. 
VIII. Fixing Habits of Industry. 
IX. Profits, and Their Influence on the Cost of Living, 

121710, 200 pages, Colored Charts, 3 Folding Plates, 
Cloth Binding, $2.00 

THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE 

140-142 Nassau Street, New York, U. S. A. 



INDUSTRIAL PLANTS 

THEIR ARRANGEMENT AND 
CONSTRUCTION 

By Charles Day 

A SYNOPSIS of the whole problem and the prac- 
tical methods of solving it, by one of the 
greatest American specialists in the design, lay- 
out, and erection of efficient manufacturing plants. 

Mr. Day has been engaged as consulting engineer 
and adviser in the construction of some of the m^t 
successful shops and factories in the United States 
His book is a formulation of the exact processes he 
follows in the office and field work connected with such 
an undertaking. 

The work is laid out by a logical scheme in which 
every step is in its proper place and proportion. The 
successive steps are then discussed in detail. Novel 
and most interesting diagrams are employed to illus- 
trate the methods, and many recently built plants are 
shown in plan and elevation. 

CONTENTS BY CHAPTERS 
I. General Classification of the Work. 
II. Determining Specific Requirements of a Plant. 

III. Selecting the Site and Defining the Buildings 

and Equipment. 

IV. Detail Plans and Specifications. 

V. Construction Work and Installation of Equip- 
ment. 
VI. Occupation and Commencement of Operation. 
VII. Routing; A Prime Factor in Plant Layout. 
VIII. Metal- Working Plants and Their Machine-Tool 
Equipment. 
IX. An Analytical Comparison of Various Actual 
Plants. 
X. Power Generation and Utilization. 
XL Functions of the Engineering Organization. 
XII. Financing and Compensation. 

12mo, Cloth Binding. Illustrated. $3.00 Prepaid. 

THE ENGINEERING MAGAZINE 

140-142 Nassau Street, New York, U. S. A. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




fiSUI I 



IS 




w. 



' I ■ 



■ >v f. 

HTM 

■ ■ ^| ' 



99 ■■ 



. ■ :rrr,r 

m 




